SFC Jared Monti was not the only hero in the battle on Hill 2610. There were 15 other brave American soldiers in the patrol who refused to back down despite the overwhelming odds against them. Jared undoubtedly would have said, "Write about them. There's no need to mention me." At the very least, he would have approved of having this book dedicated to his comrades-in-arms: SSG Chris Cunningham, SSG Patrick Lybert, SGT John Hawes, SPC John Garner, SSG Chris Grzecki, SPC Sean Smith, SPC Franklin Woods, SPC Brian Gonterman, SPC Max Noble, PFC Brian Bradbury, PFC Derek James, SPC Matthew Chambers, SPC Shawn Heistand, SPC Daniel Linnihan, and SSG Josh Renken. As John Hawes says, "Jared would have been proud to have this book dedicated to 'his boys.' He would have wanted it known that we fought together as a team." "It would be a challenge to find a group of soldiers who better represent the legacy of the 10th Mountain Division than the soldiers who fought so bravely on top of that rocky mountain near Gowardesh, Afghanistan," proclaims 10th Mountain Division Commander Major General Stephen J. Townsend. "Although badly outnumbered and separated from their unit, those soldiers refused to accept defeat."

Melinda Snodgrass has written multiple novels and screenplays, and is best known for her work on Star Trek: The Next Generation. She has also worked on numerous other shows, including The Profilers, Sliders and Seaquest DSV. She coedits the Wild Cards series with George R.R. Martin. Melinda is the author of The Edge series, which is published by Tor Books in the US and Titan Books in the UK. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Alicia Mountain’s urgent and astonishing debut collection maps a new queer landscape through terrain alive and sensual, defiant and inviting. With a voice that beckons while it howls, Mountain nimbly traverses lyric, confessional, and narrative modes, leaving groundbreaking tracks for us to follow. High Ground Coward offers fists full of soil, leftovers for breakfast, road trip as ritual, twins of lovers and twins of ourselves. This world blooms with hunger-inducing detail, its speakers asking us to consider what it will take to satisfy our own appetites while simultaneously trying to nourish one another. “Ferocious, even the softest part,” Mountain shows us “a way to fall in love with wanting,” leaving us “ravenous, but gradually.” Bearing witness to identity formation in solitude and communion, High Ground Coward is an almanac of emotional and relational seasons. Mountain’s speakers question the meaning of inheritance, illness, violence, mythology, and family architecture. Whether Mountain is at work revealing the divinity of doubt, the entanglement of devotion, or the dominion that place holds over us, High Ground Coward heralds a thrilling poetic debut. From “Scavenger” We three eat food and are in love. This is the easy way to say there are stores beneath the floor. Potatoes and shallots, hard-necked garlic streaked purple, jars beside jars, themselves each staving globes of suction. Preservation, a guardian hunger. In the evening I whisper to the boiled beet, like a naked organ in my flushed hand: You are ground blood, you are new born, you have never been nothing— thawfruit seedflower greenstart rootbulb handpull shedscrub mouthsweet and again.

In this beautiful book, Pulitzer Prize—winning musician and composer Wynton Marsalis draws upon lessons he’s learned from a lifetime in jazz–lessons that can help us all move to higher ground. With wit and candor he demystifies the music that is the birthright of every American and demonstrates how a real understanding of the central idea of jazz–the unique balance between self-expression and sacrifice for the common good exemplified on the bandstand–can enrich every aspect of our lives, from the bedroom to the boardroom, from the schoolroom to City Hall. Along the way, Marsalis helps us understand the life-changing message of the blues, reveals secrets about playing–and listening–and passes on wisdom he has gleaned from working with three generations of great musicians. Illuminating and inspiring, Moving to Higher Ground is a master class on jazz and life, conducted by a brilliant American artist.

The stories in High Ground are set in ordinary places, in the streets and suburbs and dancehalls of Dublin, the small towns and fields of the midlands, the big houses of the beleaguered Anglo-Irish in the aftermath of their ascendancy, the whole changing country propelled in a generation from the nineteenth into the late twentieth century.

Experience the Star Wars saga reimagined as an Elizabethan drama penned by William Shakespeare himself, complete with authentic meter and verse, and theatrical monologues and dialogue by everyone from Bail Organa to Count Dooku. Something is rotten in the state of Coruscant! The schemes of Emperor Palpatine come to fruition as Padmé Amidala, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, and the other Jedi duel against the clone troopers of General Grievious and the nascent Empire. Authentic meter, stage directions, reimagined movie scenes and dialogue, and hidden Easter eggs throughout will entertain and impress fans of Star Wars and Shakespeare alike. Every scene and character from the film appears in the play, along with twenty woodcut-style illustrations that depict an Elizabethan version of the Star Wars galaxy.

An intelligent and athletic young man from an upper-middle-class family and an affluent suburban town in New Jersey abruptly leaves home. At the age of nineteen, he winds up alone in Las Vegas for the winter. In order to bootstrap himself off the floor of the economy, he enlists in the U.S. Army infantry for the enlistment bonus, the promise of college funds, and an adventure. Over the next four years, the young man serves in uniform on three continents. Initially, the new soldier struggles for a year to measure up. Eventually, he becomes a good endurance athlete, a credible young man, and an effective soldier. The Spartan environment and the draconian discipline of the infantry unit impacts the youth. Alarmed by the debauchery around him, he responds by throwing himself into a rigorous self-improvement program. As a coping mechanism, he develops an intellectual philosophy uniquely suited to the infantry. After the familiarity of the army, getting out and pursuing his goal of attending college is a gut check he passes. The solo adventurer travels the Pacific Rim and Western Europe. Then he goes off to a state university in a small rural town. College is not the utopia the high-minded idealist expected. The new veteran is met with considerable hostility in the classroom and animosity on the campus. After four years in the infantry, the man has become very martial, machine-like, and ideological. Issues of identity are manifold. Unforseen readjustment problems manifest. In the isolation of the infantry battalion he has lost contact with the civilian world, and he cannot fathom the values, thinking, and the lifestyles of the students around him. The new civilian possesses few social skills and less knoledge of domestic life. He is a sort of idiot savant living in a world of book, ideas, and concept. Eventually, his mind bends, and his health breaks. Over the next years, the man endures a spiritual struggle to come to terms with his past, accept his present, and plan for an unexpected sort of future. This story explains the following questions: Where does an extremist come from? What forms the mid of an extremist? How is an extremist defused?