Some have called him Lawrence of Afghanistan. To the Pashtun tribesmen he is Commander Jim, leader of the bearded ones. He is Army Special Forces Major Jim Gant, one of the most charismatic and controversial U.S. commanders of modern memory, a man who changed the face of America’s war in Afghanistan when his critical white paper, One Tribe at a Time, went viral at the Pentagon, the White House, and on Capitol Hill in 2009.

A decorated Green Beret, Jim argued for embedding autonomous units with tribes across Afghanistan: these American soldiers would live among Afghans for extended periods, not only to train and equip tribal militias, but to fight-and even die-alongside them in battle. He argued that we could earn the trust of the Afghans and transform them into a reliable ally with whom we could defeat the Taliban and Al Qaeda networks. The military’s top brass approved the plan and gave Jim the go-ahead to embark on the mission.

As correspondent Ann Scott Tyson got to know Jim Gant the man as well as the warrior, she saw that there was a larger story to tell. Ann soon came to share Jim’s vision that Americans and Pashtuns could fight side-by-side and create real change across the region, so she accompanied him to Afghanistan, risking her life to embed with the tribes and chronicle their experience.

A war story like no other, an unprecedented account of a warrior who took up the cause of villagers as if it were his own, and of a woman on the front lines of a distant war, American Spartan is an unforgettable tale-and one of the most remarkable and emotionally resonant narratives of war ever published.