Personal narratives

Dan Piepenbring was selected by Prince to help him write his memoirs, but Prince died shortly after they began working together. Piepenbring edited the new book 'The Beautiful Ones' which includes writings by Prince about his childhood and adolescence, as well as photos, letters, and lyric sheets.

Before she turned to writing, the National Book Award nominee ran away from home and worked as a stripper. Her new collection of personal essays is Somebody with a Little Hammer.

Matthew Alexander, a pseudonym for the author, was a military interrogator in Iraq who rejected previously used harsh techniques. He writes about how his team hunted down two key al-Qaida operatives in Kill or Capture.

Former Marine Donovan Campbell served three combat deployments, two in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. He commanded Joker One, a platoon of new Marines that he trained and transformed into a fighting unit. In Iraq, they were assigned to Ramadi, the capital of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province. For seven months, they engaged in daily house-to-house combat with insurgents. Nearly half of his platoon had been wounded. Campbell was awarded a Bronze Star with Valor for his time in Iraq. Campbell now is working for PepsiCo and living in Dallas, Texas with his wife and daughter.

Former marine Donovan Campbell led a platoon against insurgents in Iraq. His memoir of his experiences is Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood.

Filmmaker Ari Folman was a 19-year-old Israeli soldier serving in Beirut at the time of the 1982 massacre of Palestinian refuges. Though he has no memory of the time, he revisits the mission in his new film, Waltz With Bashir, a surreal, animated documentary of the terror.

Iranian-American journalist Farnaz Fassihi was stationed in the Middle East from 2002 until 2006, where she covered the Iraq war and the daily struggles of the Iraqi people. She recounts her experiences in her memoir, Waiting for an Ordinary Day.

There are 100,000 private military contractors in Iraq. Mercenary John Geddes explains why he thinks this is a good thing. His new book Highway to Hell is an account of his experiences in Iraq as a soldier for hire.

Journalist Michael Weisskopf is the senior correspondent for the Washington bureau of Time magazine. In 2003, while on assignment in Baghdad, he threw a live Iraqi grenade from the back of an open Humvee. He saved himself, four soldiers and Time's photographer, but lost his hand. Weisskopf's new book is Blood Brothers: Among the Soldiers of Ward 57.

British diplomat and journalist Rory Stewart walked alone across Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban. The former fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Havard's Kennedy School of Government wrote about it in the memoir The Places in Between. Stewart was later appointed a provincial governor in post-invasion Iraq, and has a memoir about that experience as well.