Highway to Hell

Iraq is a country where insurgents and terrorist groups wage war against the American military and its coalition partners. Yet a less visible force operates there too: a loose, multinational body of private fighters, drawn from more than twenty nations and numbering roughly 30,000. Including a small number of women, these hired guns are paid around $1,000 a day, and they outnumber the British forces in Iraq by a wide margin. Only the US Army itself is larger.

Their job is to protect the people flocking into the country as it tries to rebuild after Saddam Hussein's fall. That includes businesspeople, surveyors, construction firms, oil specialists, aid workers and television crews. The book looks at this shadow army and the risky, lucrative work it does.