John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition, willingly exchanging one weekend a month and two weeks a year for a free education. But in autumn 2002, one semester short of graduating and newly married - in fact, on his honeymoon - he was called to active duty and sent to the front lines in Iraq.Crawford and his unit spent months upon months patrolling the streets of Baghdad, occupying a hostile city. During the breaks between patrols, Crawford began writing nonfiction stories about what he and his fellow soldiers witnessed and experienced.In a voice at once raw and immediate, Crawford's stories chronicle the daily life of a young soldier in Iraq - the excitement, the horror, the anger, the tedium, the fear, the camaraderie. But all together, the stories gradually uncover something more: the transformation of a group of young men, innocents, into something entirely different.Those stories became this book, a haunting and powerful, brutal but compellingly honest book - punctuated with both humor and heartbreak - that represents an important document revealing the actual experience of waging the war in Iraq, as well as the introduction of a literary voice forged in the most intense of circumstances. Read Less