Rogue Heroes: The History of the Sas, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War

"Reads like a mashup of The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape, with a sprinkling of Ocean's 11 thrown in for good measure."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR - "Rogue Heroes is a ripping good read."--Washington Post (10 Best Books of the Year)

Britain's Special Air Service--or SAS--was the brainchild of David Stirling, a young aristocrat whose aimlessness belied a remarkable strategic mind. Where most of his colleagues looked at a World War II battlefield map and saw a protracted struggle, Stirling saw an opportunity: given a small number of elite men, he could parachute behind Nazi lines and sabotage their airplanes and supplies. Defying his superiors' conventional wisdom, Stirling assembled a revolutionary fighting force that would upend not just the balance of the war, but the nature of combat itself.

Bringing his keen eye for detail to a riveting wartime narrative, Ben Macintyre uses his unprecedented access to the SAS archives to shine a light on a legendary unit long shrouded in secrecy.