On March 23, 2003, in the city of An Nasiriyah, Iraq, membersof the 507th Maintenance Company came under attack from Iraqiforces who killed or wounded twenty-one soldiers and took sixprisoners, including Private Jessica Lynch. For the next week, AnNasiriyah rocked with battle as the marines of Task Force Tarawafought Saddam's fanatical followers, street by street and buildingto building, ultimately rescuing Private Lynch.

An electrifying memoir from the acclaimed Nicaraguan writer(“A wonderfully free and original talent”—Harold Pinter) andcentral figure in the Sandinista Revolution. Until her early twenties, Gioconda Belli inhabited an upper-classcocoon: sheltered from the poverty in Managua in a world of countryclubs and debutante balls; educated abroad; early marriage andmotherhood. But in 1970, everything changed. Her growingdissatisfaction with domestic life, and a blossoming awareness ofthe social inequities in Nicaragua, led her to join theSandinistas, then a burgeoning but still hidden organization. Shewould be involved with them over the next twenty years at thehighest, and often most dangerous, levels. Her memoir is both a revelatory insider’s account of the Revolutionand a vivid, intensely felt story about coming of age underextraordinary circumstances. Belli writes with both strikinglyricism and candor about her personal and political lives: abouther family, her children, the men in her life; about her po