Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart PDF Author: Elizabeth D. Samet
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429933194
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
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.

Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart PDF Author: Elizabeth D. Samet
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429933194
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Thoughts of a Soldier's Heart

Thoughts of a Soldier's Heart PDF Author: Quince R. Brown Sr.
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1504916174
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 62

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Book Description
This book is a culmination of thoughts racing through the mind of one soldier. There are so many soldiers that have a passion for life and living while going through the pains and agony of being away from their loved ones, trying to complete their education or preparing for life outside the military. This book was written for those military members who had something to say but were emotionally unable or incapable of expressing their true feelings. For those who cannot speak for themselves, feel free to allow my words to speak for you.

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts

Steel My Soldiers' Hearts PDF Author: David H. Hackworth
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743246136
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
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.

Black Hearts

Black Hearts PDF Author: Jim Frederick
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307450988
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
“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.

Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart PDF Author: Carol Tyler
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
ISBN: 160699896X
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
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 a Soldier

Heart of a Soldier PDF Author: James B. Stewart
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439188270
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
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.

Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart PDF Author: Gary Paulsen
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
ISBN: 0440228387
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
In June 1861, when the Civil War began, Charley Goddard enlisted in the First Minnesota Volunteers. He was 15. He didn't know what a "shooting war" meant or what he was fighting for. But he didn't want to miss out on a great adventure. The "shooting war" turned out to be the horror of combat and the wild luck of survival; how it feels to cross a field toward the enemy, waiting for fire. When he entered the service he was a boy. When he came back he was different; he was only 19, but he was a man with "soldier's heart," later known as "battle fatigue."

Stories from a Soldier's Heart

Stories from a Soldier's Heart PDF Author: Alice Gray
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1590523075
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
To preserve our peace of mind and our way of life, the men and women of the United States military often sacrifice their youth-and sometimes even their lives. They steadfastly guard the futures of millions of people they will never meet. Now over seventy-five riveting stories bring to life these heroes and the loved ones they have fought for. Organized in six themed sections: patriotism, inspiration, faith on the frontlines, love and family, honor and sacrifice, and dedication and courage. Stories from a Soldier's Heart honors those who carry in their warrior hearts the world's hope for freedom.

A Long Way Gone

A Long Way Gone PDF Author: Ishmael Beah
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374105235
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life. “Why did you leave Sierra Leone?” “Because there is a war.” “You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?” “Yes, all the time.” “Cool.” I smile a little. “You should tell us about it sometime.” “Yes, sometime.” This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried PDF Author: Tim O'Brien
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547420293
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere—from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing—it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.