{"product_id":"2940170717903","title":"Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death","description":"This is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division's fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment-a unit known as the Black Heart Brigade. Deployed in late 2005 to Iraq's so-called Triangle of Death, a veritable meat grinder just south of Baghdad, the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably the country's most dangerous location at its most dangerous time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks, suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring a chronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heart platoon-1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion-descended, over their year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse, and brutality.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFour 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the most heinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the Iraq War-the rape of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-blooded execution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldiers would be overrun at a remote outpost-one killed immediately and two taken from the scene, their mutilated corpses found days later booby-trapped with explosives.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBlack Hearts\u003c\/i\u003e is an unflinching account of the epic, tragic deployment of 1st Platoon. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with Black Heart soldiers and first-hand reporting from the Triangle of Death, \u003ci\u003eBlack Hearts\u003c\/i\u003e is a timeless story about men in combat and the fragility of character in the savage crucible of warfare. But it is also a timely warning of new dangers emerging in the way American soldiers are led on the battlefields of the twenty-first century.","brand":"Tantor Audio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47102496866544,"sku":"2940170717903","price":21.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940170717903_p0.jpg?v=1763715456","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940170717903","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}