Jarhead: A Solder's Story of Modern War

(Paperback, Film Tie-In)

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Description

Anthony Swofford's grandfather fought in WWII; his father fought in Vietnam; and he - a directionless, testosterone-battered teenager - became a scout/sniper in the marines and fought in the Gulf War. His account of that time is also part of a lineage - after Wilfred Owen, Norman Mailer, Michael Herr and Tim O'Brien, it brings the raw and searing tradition of soldiers' stories up to date. A harrowing yet inspiring portrait of a tormented consciousness struggling for reconciliation and peace, JARHEAD is authentic, revelatory and brilliantly crafted.

Reviews

"A bayonet in the eye...brutal and unforgettable."

--"The Sacramento Bee"

"A brutally honest memoir...gut-wrenching frontline reportage."

--"Entertainment Weekly"

"A searing contribution to the literature of combat."

--Michiko Kakutani, "The New York Times"

Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D.

Author of "Odysseus in America" and "Achilles in Vietnam"

This memoir is not pretty -- but veined with beauty. It is as outrageous, irreverent, funny, and obscene as an Aristophanes comedy, and as rich in pain and moral understanding as the "Iliad." Anthony Swofford: remember this name.

William Boyd

Author of "Any Human Heart"

A scathingly honest and bleakly powerful book. A hugely disturbing insight into the minds of the very young men who long to go to war.

Author Bio

Anthony Swofford served in a U.S. Marine Corps Surveillance and Target Acquisition/Scout-Sniper platoon during the Gulf War. After the war, he was educated at American River College; the University of California, Davis; and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has taught at the University of Iowa and Lewis and Clark College. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New York Times, Harper's, Men's Journal, The Iowa Review, and other publications. A Michener-Copernicus Fellowship recipient, he lives in New York.