This book depicts the author's military experiences during the Vietnam Era, first as an ROTC cadet at the University of Notre Dame and finally as an Army veteran teaching in Madison, Wisconsin, focusing upon Schwartz's experience at West Point, its cadets, officer corps and system of education.

2016 Santa Fe literary awards - finalist 2016 Next Generation Indie Book awards - finalist 2016 USA Best Book Awards - finalist in the memoir category 2016 Author Awards, 2nd place in the memoir category A SheKnows.com and Mind Body and Green Must-Read! Featured in Buzzfeed, Working Mother Magazine, The Reading Room, Brit and Co., Writer's Digest, Style, Huffington Post, Jewish Book Council, and Jewish Values Center. At age nineteen, Dorit Sasson, a dual American-Israeli citizen, was trying to make the status quo work as a college student—until she realized that if she didn’t distance herself from her neurotic, worrywart of a mother, she would become just like her. Accidental Soldier: A Memoir of Service and Sacrifice in the Israel Defense Forces is Sasson’s story of how she dropped out of college and volunteered for the Israel Defense Forces in an effort to change her life—and how, in stepping out of her comfort zone and into a war zone, she discovered courage and faith she didn’t know she was capable of.

During World War I, Harry Lambert reluctantly finds himself fighting on Europe's Western Front. Watching his friends die around him, Harry can't bear the thought of dying before ever having truly known love. Making a life-changing decision, he deserts, walking away from the battlefield into an unfamiliar and hostile French countryside. Desperately trying to avoid capture, he meets Colombe, a stoic farm-wife bowed by hard work and tragedy, who will risk everything to save his life.

"I was born in a log cabin just like Abe Lincoln, except our cabin was a rental." Starting with this account of his humble origins, Manny Garcia, who describes himself as "a left-handed, rather contrary Mestizo-American," has written a memoir that begins in late 1947 in the San Luis Valley of Southern Colorado and takes him to Utah and a stint as a Mormon and ultimately to Vietnam. In late 1965, a cocky, naive, alienated teen-ager, Garcia joined the army almost accidentally, enlisting for three years. At eighteen he became an Airborne Ranger, a combat infantryman with the crack First Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles. His book shows you the war from the point man position, up close and personal, at eye level. "I returned to the body and checked for booby traps. I noticed the guerilla's small bare leathery feet. I rolled the body over and realized the corpse at my feet was an old woman. Her hair was pulled back and tied in a bun, like how my grandmother used to wear her own hair. This was my first kill. I killed a woman before I made love to one. I killed a woman before I was old enough to vote. I killed a woman before I bought my first car. I killed a woman and I was an Eagle Scout. I killed a woman while I was on probation to the Juvenile Court. I killed a woman before I knew she was a woman. I killed a woman while working for the United States Army in South Vietnam. I had killed before I had lived. The afternoon in the jungle was bright and hot. I stood there sweating, bewildered, dumfounded, and completely absorbed by the power."--from An Accidental Soldier "A valuable contribution to the growing list of Viet Nam narratives told from communities whose histories have yet to be fully recognized."--Jorge Mariscal, University of California, San Diego

In the tradition of Michael Herr's Dispatches, a National Guardsman's account of the war in Iraq. John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition, willingly exchanging one weekend a month and two weeks a year for a free education. But in Autumn 2002, one semester short of graduating and newly married—in fact, on his honeymoon—he was called to active duty and sent to the front lines in Iraq. Crawford and his unit spent months upon months patrolling the streets of Baghdad, occupying a hostile city. During the breaks between patrols, Crawford began recording what he and his fellow soldiers witnessed and experienced. Those stories became The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell—a haunting and powerful, compellingly honest book that imparts the on-the-ground reality of waging the war in Iraq, and marks as the introduction of a mighty literary voice forged in the most intense of circumstances.

When nineteen-year-old Dorit Sasson realized she had no choice but to distance herself from her neurotic, worrywart of a mother in order to become her own person, she volunteered for the Israel Defense Forces--and found her path to freedom.