Joker One

After graduating from Princeton, Donovan Campbell joined the Marines and took command of Joker One, a forty-man infantry platoon of brand-new Marines whom he had only months to train into a cohesive fighting unit. His memoir centres on the platoon's 2004 deployment to Ramadi, capital of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province, where it fought street to street and house to house for seven months. Campbell describes his thinking as a commander, the daily tactics against IEDs, RPGs and ambushes, and the effort to win the support of the city's people. The platoon took its name from its radio call sign. Random House published it in 2009, and it became a New York Times bestseller.

Ramit Sethi lists it among 50 books he recommends.