Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart
Author: Elizabeth D. Samet
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2004-08-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1429933194

Elizabeth D. Samet and her students learned to romanticize the army "from the stories of their fathers and from the movies." For Samet, it was the old World War II movies she used to watch on TV, while her students grew up on Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Unlike their teacher, however, these students, cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, have decided to turn make-believe into real life. West Point is a world away from Yale, where Samet attended graduate school and where nothing sufficiently prepared her for teaching literature to young men and women who were training to fight a war. Intimate and poignant, Soldier's Heart chronicles the various tensions inherent in that life as well as the ways in which war has transformed Samet's relationship to literature. Fighting in Iraq, Samet's former students share what books and movies mean to them—the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the fiction of Virginia Woolf and J. M. Coetzee, the epics of Homer, or the films of James Cagney. Their letters in turn prompt Samet to wonder exactly what she owes to cadets in the classroom. Samet arrived at West Point before September 11, 2001, and has seen the academy change dramatically. In Soldier's Heart, she reads this transformation through her own experiences and those of her students. Forcefully examining what it means to be a civilian teaching literature at a military academy, Samet also considers the role of women in the army, the dangerous tides of religious and political zeal roiling the country, the uses of the call to patriotism, and the cult of sacrifice she believes is currently paralyzing national debate. Ultimately, Samet offers an honest and original reflection on the relationship between art and life.

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts
Author: David H. Hackworth
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2003-05-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 0743246136

The commanding officer of an infantry battalion in Vietnam in 1969 recounts how he took over a demoralized unit of ordinary draftees and turned it into an elite fighting force, and describes its accomplishments.

Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart
Author: Carol Tyler
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2015-10-23
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 160699896X

In the wake of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Art Spiegelman’s Maus comes cartoonist Carol Tyler’s multigenerational graphic memoir, You’ll Never Know. The author chronicles her fraught relationship with her father, Charles, a WWII veteran, and how the war affected their lives through both childhood and adulthood. You’ll Never Know is also a tribute to servicemen and women, dramatizing the trauma of the war on the Greatest Generation and those who followed. Tyler’s ink and watercolor narrative is in turns sprawling and gimlet-eyed: compassionate and enraged. Her father’s memories are woven into her own, which span her Catholic, Midwestern childhood; her troubled marriage; her daughter’s struggles; and her efforts to care for her aging parents. Even though Tyler’s work has an accessible, homemade feel (the organizing metaphor of the book is a photo album with “snapshots” of Tyler family life), You’ll Never Know is a sophisticated graphic work about war, love, and loss.

Heart of War

Heart of War
Author: Damon DiMarco
Publisher: Citadel Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2007
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806528141

Contains the personal testimonies and first-hand accounts of the war in Iraq from eighteen soldiers on the front lines.

Black Hearts

Black Hearts
Author: Jim Frederick
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 474
Release: 2010-02-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0307450988

“Riveting. . . a testament to a misconceived war, and to the ease with which ordinary men, under certain conditions, can transform into monsters.”—New York Times Book Review This is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division’s fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment—a unit known as “the Black Heart Brigade.” Deployed in late 2005 to Iraq’s so-called Triangle of Death, a veritable meat grinder just south of Baghdad, the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably the country’s most dangerous location at its most dangerous time. Hit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks, suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring a chronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heart platoon—1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion—descended, over their year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse, and brutality. Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the most heinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the Iraq War—the rape of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-blooded execution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldiers would be overrun at a remote outpost—one killed immediately and two taken from the scene, their mutilated corpses found days later booby-trapped with explosives. Black Hearts is an unflinching account of the epic, tragic deployment of 1st Platoon. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with Black Heart soldiers and first-hand reporting from the Triangle of Death, Black Hearts is a timeless story about men in combat and the fragility of character in the savage crucible of warfare. But it is also a timely warning of new dangers emerging in the way American soldiers are led on the battlefields of the twenty-first century.

Heart of a Soldier

Heart of a Soldier
Author: James B. Stewart
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2009-11-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1439188270

From Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart comes the extraordinary story of American hero Rick Rescorla, Morgan Stanley security director and a veteran of Vietnam and the British colonial wars in Rhodesia, who lost his life on September 11. When Rick Rescorla got home from Vietnam, he tried to put combat and death behind him, but he never could entirely. From the day he joined the British Army to fight a colonial war in Rhodesia, where he met American Special Forces’ officer Dan Hill who would become his best friend, to the day he fell in love with Susan, everything in his remarkable life was preparing him for an act of generosity that would transcend all that went before. Heart of a Soldier is a story of bravery under fire, of loyalty to one’s comrades, of the miracle of finding happiness late in life. Everything about Rick’s life came together on September 11. In charge of security for Morgan Stanley, he successfully got all its 2,700 men and women out of the south tower of the World Trade Center. Then, thinking perhaps of soldiers he’d held as they died, as well as the woman he loved, he went back one last time to search for stragglers. Heart of a Soldier is a story that inspires, offers hope, and helps heal even the deepest wounds.

The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers

The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds, and Souls of Our Soldiers
Author: Nancy Sherman
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2010-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0393078078

"Brilliant . . . a must read for veterans and those who seek to understand them."—Huffington Post The Untold War draws on revealing interviews with servicemen and -women to offer keen psychological and philosophical insights into the experience of being a soldier. Bringing to light the ethical quandaries that soldiers face—torture, the thin line between fighters and civilians, and the anguish of killing even in a just war—Nancy Sherman opens our eyes to the fact that wars are fought internally as well as externally, enabling us to understand the emotional tolls that are so often overlooked.

Mosquito Soldiers

Mosquito Soldiers
Author: Andrew McIlwaine Bell
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2010-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0807137375

Of the 620,000 soldiers who perished during the American Civil War, the overwhelming majority died not from gunshot wounds or saber cuts, but from disease. In this ground-breaking medical history, Andrew McIlwaine Bell explores the impact of two terrifying mosquito-borne maladies---malaria and yellow fever---on the major political and military events of the 1860s, revealing how deadly microorganisms carried by a tiny insect helped shape the course of the Civil War.

Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart
Author: Sarah Hansel
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1995
Genre: Post-traumatic stress disorder
ISBN: 9780962916465

"Since the end of World War II, a substantial body of literature has been written on the causes and treatment of war-related traumatic stress disorder ... What contribution does [this book] make to veterans, their families, and treatment professionals? How is it different from other books? Most literature that addresses combat trauma is written by or for treatment professionals, and is not widely read by vets. Most veteran writings are in the nature of 'war stories', which capture the actual combat experience, but not the emotional legacy of trauma, its effect upon their lives, or upon their families ... In war, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines quickly learn to count on each other for survival. Vets often don't believe that anyone, including family and treatment professionals, who hasn't endured combat can understand or help them deal with the effects of combat trauma. Veterans often have difficulty describing their experiences and feelings to family and friends. Family members frequently don't know how to respond in ways the veteran will accept. The editors, a team of clinicians, a veteran recovered from PTSD, and his spouse, recognized the need for a book written by veterans and family members, for vets and their families, that would help survivors -- veteran and family alike -- cope with the effects of combat trauma in their lives. Working as a team, clinicians ... formed a non-profit organization, The National Trauma Institute at Baltimore, whose mission is to advocate for those experiencing stress related traumas, their families, and clinicians working with these individuals. The Institute's first project is [this book]"--Page 6-7.

Twice Armed

Twice Armed
Author: R Alan King, Lt. R. Alan King
Publisher:
Total Pages: 366
Release:
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781610607612

Lieutenant Colonel R. Alan King and his 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion became operations central after the collapse of the Iraqi army and the beginning of the occupation of Iraq in March 2003. While under his command, these civil affairs and psychological operations soldiers were not content to stay in secure offices inside the green zone. Instead, they knew that to do their job they had to get out and make "house calls," and in the process the 422nd became the most highly decorated civil affairs unit in the history of the U.S. Army, with twenty-one individual awards for valor and five purple hearts. King was particularly well-suited for the new kind of war being waged in Iraq. Armed with his rifle, a Palm Pilot that contained an English translation of the Koran, and an informed and nuanced respect for Middle Eastern culture, King and his team captured or arranged the surrender of almost a dozen of the most-wanted villains from Saddam's regime, including several from the famous deck of cards. He became privy to secrets as weighty as those of Iraq's nuclear weapons program and as light as those behind the outlandish press briefings of the infamous Baghdad Bob. Twice Armed - its title is taken from Plato's maxim We are twice armed if we fight with faith - provides a compelling view of the Iraq war, and the experience from the Iraqi perspective, from one of the war's most decorated officers. The regional expertise that helped King negotiate with clerics and sheikhs also informs his provocative opinions about what it will take to win the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraq, an ancient, mystifying, and deeply religious culture. King has been compared to the legendary T. E. Lawrence, with the press dubbing him “Alan of Arabia,” and this book sheds light on a new and necessary component of modern warfare, one that goes far beyond artillery and armor, and instead tells King's story of cultural interaction and respect that yielded results in his area at the beginning of the war. A trenchant and necessary look at how the winning of the hearts and minds of people in Iraq is as crucial to success as the winning of tactical military goals.