Books like Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward

A frontline chronicle of the United States’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, told through the eyes of New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins.

With Obama's election to the presidency in 2008, many believed the United States had entered a new era: Obama came into office with high expectations that he would end the war in Iraq and initiate a new foreign policy that would reestablish American values and the United States' leadership role in the world. In this new assessment, historian Lloyd C. Gardner argues that, despite cosmetic changes, Obama has simply built on the expanding power base of presidential power that reaches back across decades and through multiple administrations. The new president ended the "enhanced interrogation" policy of the Bush administration but did not abandon the concept of preemption. Obama withdrew from Iraq but has institutionalized drone warfare -- including the White House's central role in selecting targets. What has come into view, Gardner argues, is the new face of American presidential power: high-tech, secretive, global, and lethal. Killing Machine narrates the drawdown in Iraq, the counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan, the rise of the use of drones, and targeted assassinations from al-Awlaki to Bin Laden -- drawing from the words of key players in these actions as well as their major public critics.

Former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates gives a candid, personal account of his time serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

An account of the transformation of the CIA and America's special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world's dark spaces: the new American way of war.

A detailed account of President George W. Bush’s decision to launch the 2003 Iraq invasion, drawn from interviews with 75 key officials and extensive conversations with the president himself.

Journalistic chronicle of President George W. Bush’s decision‑making and candid interviews during the early years of the War on Terror.

The Afghanistan Papers, by Craig Whitlock, uncovers how successive U.S. administrations misled the public about the Afghan War, revealing strategic failures, miscommunication, and the erosion of trust in Washington’s war objectives.