The Guerilla Factory: The Making of Special Forces Officers, the Green Berets

The Navy has the Navy Seals and the Army has the Green Berets. Men forged in battle, the Green Berets immerse themselves in hostile territory, sleeping next to their enemies to study the people who want to kill them. In this behind-the-scenes memoir, acclaimed as "riveting" and an "eye-opening, unconventional war story" (Kirkus Reviews), Green Beret and retired lieutenant colonel Tony Schwalm takes you deep inside the legendary training camp that turns men into warriors. The Special Forces Qualification Course, a.k.a. Q Course, is infamous as the training pipeline through which conventional soldiers are transformed, with blood, sweat, and tears, into unconventional guerrillas.

Tony Schwalm knows that pipeline from end to end. As a student, he went through it to earn his green beret. As a commander of Special Forces, he operated the pipeline at Fort Bragg, pushing soldiers through brutal tests of physical strength and stamina. In this dramatic account, Schwalm brings what Publishers Weekly calls a "fresh, authentic voice" to describe the challenges of the Q Course, where men are pushed to the point of hallucination, walk until their feet are bloody, step off thirty-foot waterfalls in the dark, and fight packs of angry dogs with nothing but a rubber rifle.

Revealing details never shared outside of military circles, Schwalm provides a rare and rousing look inside the courageous souls of soldiers who put their lives on the line for duty, honour, and country. The Dallas Morning News recommends, "For fans of military memoirs, his book is first-rate reading."