Volunteers Growing Up in the Forever War [Audiobook]

Most of all, he dreamed of enlisting-like his mother, father, stepfather, and grandfather before him-and playing his part in the Great American War Story. He joined the US Marines straight out of high school, eager for action. Once in Iraq, however, he came to realize he was fighting a lost cause, enmeshed in the ongoing War on Terror that was really just a fruitless display of American might. The myths of war, the stories of violence and masculinity and heroism, the legacy of his family-everything Alexander had planned his life around-was a mirage. Alternating scenes from childhood with skirmishes in the Iraqi desert, this original, searing, and propulsive memoir introduces a powerful new voice in the literature of war. Jerad W. Alexander-not some elite warrior, but a simple volunteer-delivers a passionate and timely reckoning with the troubled and cyclical truths of the American war machine.