'Grunt' tackles the science behind some of a soldier's most challenging adversaries -- panic, exhaustion, heat, noise -- and introduces us to the scientists who seek to conquer them. Mary Roach dodges hostile fire with the U.S. Marine Corps Paintball Team as part of a study on hearing loss and survivability in combat. She visits the fashion design studio of U.S. Army Natick Labs and learns why a zipper is a problem for a sniper. She visits a repurposed...

"America's Destruction of Iraq by Washington insider Michael M. O'Brien details the origins of radical Islamic terrorism now spreading across the Middle East and North Africa. The outgrowth of America's involvement in Iraq, culminating with its March 2003 invasion, is the Islamic State-the most violent terrorist organization in history. Michael O'Brien is an outlier: a conservative and former political appointee in the administration of George W....

"Detroit": Fact-based drama set during the 1967 Detroit riots in which a group of rogue police officers respond to a complaint with retribution rather than justice on their minds. "The hurt locker": During the Iraq War, a Sergeant recently assigned to an army bomb squad is put at odds with his squad mates due to his maverick way of handling his work. "Point break": An F.B.I. Agent goes undercover to catch a gang of surfers who may be bank robbers. "The...