Kevin Maurer is an award-winning journalist and three-time New York Times best-selling co-author of No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission that Killed Osama bin Laden, No Hero: The Evolution of a Navy SEAL and American Radical: Inside the World of an Undercover Muslim FBI Agent.
Maurer is the author of nine books, including The Gentlemen Bastards, which chronicled an unprecedented ten week embed with a Special Forces team in southern Afghanistan. His other books include Hunter Killer, a behind-the-scenes look at America’s drone war and two books with Pulitzer Prize Winner Mitch Weiss. One covered the battle of Shok Valley in Afghanistan that led to the award of ten Silver Star medals and two Medals of Honor and the other chronicled the hunt for Che Guevara through the eyes of the American operatives.
Maurer’s first World War II narrative, Rock Force, was published in 2020. It is the thrilling story of the American airborne soldiers who captured a Japanese-held island fortress. Drawn from firsthand accounts and personal interviews with the battle’s surviving veterans, Maurer delves into this extraordinary tale, uncovering astonishing accounts of bravery and heroism during an epic, yet largely forgotten, clash of the Pacific War. Rock Force is an intimate story of uncommon soldiers showing uncommon courage, and winning, through blood and sacrifice. His latest book, Damn Lucky, will be published in April, 2022.
For the last eleven years, Maurer has also worked as a freelance writer covering war, politics and general interest stories for the Atlantic, Men’s Journal, GQ, The Daily Beast, The Washington Post, and numerous other publications. Maurer has been embedded with the Special Forces in Afghanistan six times. He spent a month in 2006 with special operations units in east and central Africa, and he was embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq and Haiti.