Focuses on military memoirs: One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (2005) by Nathaniel Fick, The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq (2005) by John Crawford, My War: Killing Time in Iraq (2006) by Colby Buzzell, Soft Spots: A Marine's Memoir of Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (2009) by Clint van Winkle and Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War (2010) by Matt Gallagher

"Walt Whitman wrote: "The real war will never get into the books." To this day, however, American soldier-authors write about their war and translate traumatic experiences into language accessible to the reader. Veterans of the recent Iraq war do not differ here. Joining the post-draft American military, the selected soldier-authors are thrust into a conflict which soon exceeded governmental, military and public expectations. Focusing on core elements which link the selected military memoirs of Nathaniel Fick, Colby Buzzell, Clint Van Winkle, John Crawford and Matt Gallagher together, this book follows the soldier-authors' process of soldierization, their loss of innocence, moral responsibility and, finally, coping mechanisms for traumatic experiences sustained in combat" --