Looking at seven landmark U.S. military Special Operations missions, from 1970s Vietnam to Iraq in the 21st century, military writers Zimmerman and Gresham (Special Forces: A Guided Tour, with Tom Clancy) detail how the secretive, oft-misunderstood Special Ops forces have developed into "the best in the world" at carrying out high-risk/high-reward, and often highly classified, missions. Both successes (like the "Immaculate Mission" during Operation Iraqi Freedom) and failures (like the 1980 attempt to rescue U.S. Embassy personnel in Iran) are documented in exhausting detail, and cogent analysis spells out the consequences; for example, a raid on a POW prison in Hanoi didn't bring anyone home, but did drive the North Vietnamese to treat its prisoners more humanely, and pushed them toward peace talks in Paris.