Shares firsthand wartime accounts describing the courageous battlefield sacrifices of men and women from every branch and operational specialty of the U.S. military, from the Vietnam War through the present. These are the brutally honest stories usually only shared amongst comrades in arms. Here, in the voices of the men and women whove fought overseas from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, is a rare eye-opening look into what wearing the uniform,...

Moonlight meets American Sniper in this groundbreaking memoir and political commentary from a bold new voice in American politics. Before he became a war veteran and political analyst, he was a young black man who enlisted in the U.S. Army right out of high school, survived the notoriously brutal Infantry basic training, and served while remaining a closeted gay man to all but a few of his colleagues. At his first duty station, he finds himself in...

"In Iraq, as a combat physician and officer, Jon Kerstetter balanced two impossibly conflicting imperatives - to heal and to kill. When he suffered an injury and then a stroke during his third tour, he wound up back home in Iowa, no longer able to be either a doctor or a soldier. In this gorgeous memoir that moves from his impoverished upbringing on an Oneida reservation, to his harrowing stints as a volunteer medic in Kosovo and Bosnia, through the...

More women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan than in any other conflict in our nation's history, and today they compose about 15 percent of the armed services. Soldier Girls follows the experiences of three women in the Indiana National Guard -- one a young college student, one a single mother, and one a grandmother -- who chose to enlist for different reasons, never expecting they would go to war. Though quite far apart in age and in their political...

"[T]ells the remarkable story of Royal Air Force technician Frank Williams and Judy, a purebred pointer, who met in an internment camp during WWII. Judy was a fiercely loyal animal who sensed danger and instinctively mistrusted anyone in enemy uniform. Their relationship deepened throughout their imprisonment. The prisoners suffered severe beatings which Judy would interrupt with her barking. The dog became a beacon for the men, who saw in her survival...

"During his three combat-filled tours of duty in Afghanistan, former college sports star and skilled paratrooper U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Travis Mills never once backed down from the hardest challenges that came his way. The big, likable guy literally woke up every morning proudly singing the 82nd Airborne song to encourage and motivate the men he led. But late one afternoon in April 2012 while Travis and his men were on a routine mission near a remote...

On the hellish battlefields of World War II Europe, Major Dick Winters led his Easy Company the now-legendary Band of Brothers from the confusion and chaos of the D-Day invasion to the final capture of Hitlers Eagles Nest. But Winters's story didn't end there. It was only the beginning.

In a collection of compelling, original portraits, the authors celebrate the extraordinary heroism on the battlefield and the equally valuable contributions on the home front of this generation's American veterans.