Always Faithful, Always Forward: The Forging of a Special Operations Marine

Where most people associate U.S. military special operations with the Navy's SEALS or the Army's Rangers and Green Berets, veteran novelist and military writer Couch (The Warrior Elite) reports on the lesser-known U.S. Marine Corps Special Operations Command. Known as MARSOC and formed early in 2006, the unit was designed to perform four main missions: unconventional warfare, special reconnaissance, direct military action, and what Couch calls "foreign internal defense." Couch, a Naval Academy graduate and former SEAL, starts with a brief history of American military special ops, then hones on the book's mission chronicling a class of 79 Marines who went through the nine-month Individual Training Course at Camp Lejeune that started in November 2012. He details the philosophical and practical underpinnings of the physically rigorous and psychologically challenging course, and offers history of its development along the way. Couch is an unabashed fan of the program and the Marines who have completed it%E2%80%94those "superb young special warriors," he writes, who are performing special operations today in MARSOC units around the globe. This is an excellent, if overtly military-centric, resource for those looking for insight into modern special operations warfare and training. (June)