FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan — Chief Warrant Officers Keith Lacy and David Fleckenstein were hunting an insurgent mortar team from the sky when news came over the radio: troops under fire.

Two men, posing as maintenance workers for a mountaintop cell tower outside the Afghan village of Musa Khel, had shaken hands and shared a meal with the First Platoon of Charlie Company, 1/26th Infantry. But as the soldiers began winding their way downhill the night of Aug. 1, the repairmen started tossing grenades down the mountain after them. At least four troops were wounded. One U.S. staff...

If you’re looking for a textbook example of technology obstruction by the media industry, look no further than e-textbooks.

“About 90 percent of the time, the cheapest option is still to buy a used book and then resell that book,” says Jonathan Robinson, founder of FreeTextbooks.com, an online retailer of discount books. “That is really an obstacle for widespread adoption [of e-textbooks], because smarter consumers realize that and are not going to leap into the digital movement until the pricing evens out.”

That’s sad news for students headed back to college this fall. IPads, Kindles and even H...