Jarhead. - Softcover

Chris OffuttAuthor of "No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home""Jarhead" tells us why boys go to war and how they return as men, told by someone who truly knows the perils of battle -- a decorated veteran of the Gulf War. Anthony Swofford's courageous and lyric prose is matched by a searing personal honesty that will break your heart with its compassion. He reveals the inner life of a marine from boot camp to bombardment, to victory and peace. Like all great memoirs of war, humanity is at stake instead of politics. Anthony Swofford entered his adult life as a warrior, but has emerged as an artist of the highest order. This book is a great achievement. Everyone should read it. Scott AndersonWar journalist and author of "Triage and The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Fred Cuny"Swofford's "Jarhead" is not just the finest memoir to emerge from Operation Desert Storm but one of the most honest and compelling accounts of men at arms in a generation. With a keen eye and biting wit, Swofford has rendered the true face of the battlefield -- what it looks and sounds and tastes like -- as only one who has been there can. In an age when politicians are again talking about good and just wars, "Jarhead" should be required reading for all those who would believe them. Joy WilliamsThis is a book that smokes and screams in your hands. With a sniper's cold and unforgiving eye, Swofford has found the nexus between nihilism and language, a language ripped, homegrown, American-made, trashy and lyrical and bold. He hits the troubling, difficult mark again and again in this remarkable memoir. Brash, honest, and most unnerving, "Jarhead" delivers coruscating and unpleasant truths about war and warriors. 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 BoydAuthor 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.

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 Ameican 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 Portland, Oregon, where he is at work on a novel.