Book Review: Elle & Coach (diabetic child, service dog)

Elle & Coach: Diabetes, The Fight for My Daughter's Life, and the Dog Who Changed Everything, by Stefany Shaheen (Hachette, 2015, 229 pages, $27) Elle and her mother are interviewed on C-SPAN here.

Can we pick not one but two Books of the Year in just the first two months? 

We nearly did! And Elle & Coach may be it. We had started this book years ago and loved it but put it aside for some reason until we finally picked it up again and raced through it in a couple of hours. And cried all the way through, it is such a lovely book.

Author Stefany Shaheen, Senator and former Governor Jeanne Shaheen's daughter, is mother to Elle, eight years old when the story opens. Living in New Hampshire, they have a huge extended family and live in New England near many excellent hospitals. 

What is Diabetes Mellitus?

First of all, diabetes 1 is generally hereditary and diagnosed in childhood while diabetes 2 is adult-onset and usually caused primarily by obesity or other lifestyles. In both types, your pancreas doesn't produce enough insulin to control the amount of glucose (a sugar) in your blood. You are very thirsty and have to urinate more, you are hungry yet lose weight, may have vision problems, fatigue, very dry skin and may lose feeling in your hands or feet. Elle gradually lost weight and would get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and drink copious amounts of water. She had trouble seeing and her grades were plummeting. 

So, What Happened?

Elle experienced some of these symptoms gradually and others rapidly over a few days and fortunately was hospitalized for a week to get her insulin dosage under control. Diabetes is especially inconvenient for children in large active families for these kids need blood checks several times a day to determine the amount of insulin needed depending on varying physical activity, stress, food, and snacks. Too much glucose can result in coma while too little can result in seizures, both of which is a heavy burden for a child and her family.

Enter Coach!

Fortunately, dogs have the ability to detect (most likely by their incredibly sensitive sense of smell) when someone's blood sugar is too high or too low - usually before the person himself is aware of it. Dogs can be trained to alert the person to check his blood sugar and to treat it.

Coach is one such DAD, diabetic alert dog, trained by CARES, a service dog organization in Kansas.

After living with diabetes for five years, Elle's family learned about DADs and were put on a waiting list for a trained medical alert service dog. Within the first 24 hours of their being matched up, Coach saved Elle's life and continues to do so, allowing Elle to live a more normal life. They are together 24/7 and have a deep relationship. This has been a lifesaver for Elle. As a matter of fact, last year's article on Elle in the Harvard Crimson, about her senior thesis does not even mention her diabetes.

Now, Back to the Book

The reader will experience childhood diabetes and how it was detected in Elle (whose uncle also had diabetes 1), will come to understand how it affects family routines and relationships, and, finally, how a service dog can help a child feel more normal again as well as keep the child safe, healthy and perhaps alive (Elle even meets President Obama and Michael J. Fox). You will go through the anxiety and fear of not knowing what is wrong with your child, the constant worry about one child more than the others, the stress of getting up in the middle of the night to check on that child, having to make sure she has test strips and candy at all times, is warm enough and doesn't overdo it, and learn how to determine the amount of various ingredients in different foods and their amounts. And still, the disease can surprise you with a crisis that you blame yourself for.

Is Elle & Coach a Dog Book?

Primarily, it is about a little girl and her mother, and family, but also about a dog. If it were a dog book, it would have been titled, Coach & Elle, rather than Elle & Coach. We don't even hear about DADs until nearly halfway through the book, and then, life with Coach seems too cursory for dog people, even if she is a beautiful yellow labrador retriever, America's favorite. And, besides being a service dog, Coach is well-loved as a family pet.

Who Else has Diabetes?

Mary Tyler Moore, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Jean Smart of Designing Women, Olympic swimmer Gary Hall, Miss Idaho Sierra Sanderson, Miss America Vanessa Williams all have (had) 'childhood' diabetes while these famous people have adult-onset diabetes 2: Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Larry King, Patti LaBelle, Drew Carey, and Dick Clark. Obviously, it is a chronic condition you can live with.

What We Liked

The suspense, even though we know how it ends. 

What We Would Change

We, being dog people, would reverse the focus and put more of it on Coach. However, the depiction of Coach first saving Elle's life in their first 24 hours together should be a short story everywhere - in Reader's Digest, in documentaries, on news reports, in the Dodo and Huffington Post.

Nevertheless, . . . . 

If you love dog memoirs or know someone with diabetes, this is one darn good dog book and highly inspirational. 

Book Review: American Dog, Star (blind Aussie, 12 yo boy, dog shelter and training, treasure!)

Star (American Dog) by Jennifer Shotz* (Clarion Books, 2022, 334 pages, $7.99 for the paperback or the Kindle or Nook version, $12.99 hardcover, grades 2-5, ages 10-12), 4th in the American Dog series. Read Chapter 1 of 26 chapters here.

As the fourth book in the series, all written this year by the very prolific Jennifer Shotz, Star is a long book that reads quickly, especially the second half, even though the educated, erudite junior high school reader can guess what will happen (and is usually correct, but not all the time).

The Dog, The Boy

Star is a blind, very scared shelter dog who lashes out so that nobody can approach her until 12-year-old Julian starts volunteering, not his idea, his volunteer hours substituted for Saturday morning detention for not turning in his homework time after time. 

Julian really tries hard but school is very hard for him. He has trouble reading, a condition which we know as dyslexia - well-known but not well-understood or accepted. Julian is teased and ostracized, and not understood even by his family. 

The Plot

Julian loves maps and never gets lost. The boy who shows him the ropes at the shelter is Bryan, the principal's son and also a loner in Julian's class but even Julian stays away from Bryan until he realizes how talented Bryan is with dogs. We soon find out Julian is better with dogs and when Julian reveals his dyslexia to Bryan, Bryan only laughs. Read Chapter 6 to find out why! 

And, guess what? Bryan helps Julian with his dyslexia, teaching him different methods to help his reading. And reading the dogs' biographies at the shelter is easy because the topics are the same (age, name, favorite treats, etc.) and because Julian loves dogs.

So, that sets the stage on the shores of Lake Michigan. . . .

Together, the boys train Star while she is in the shelter. And Julian has always wanted a dog so he is so excited and seems to be a natural at it. Fortunately, they use clicker training and positive reinforcement. And Julian's grandfather was a dog handler in the military and knows some hand signals which are imperative to use with deaf dogs.

And Then, . . . . 

A book also has to have a hidden treasure and boys who don't always use good judgement. There are plenty of exciting mishaps, from a hurt dog to secretly 'taking' a dog from the shelter to not telling an adult where you are going and getting into trouble. But there is also learning and growth and love and acceptance - and dogs!

This reviewer is so glad the readers are being exposed to reward-based dog training and come to realize a 'different' kid is special and a deaf dog is just as normal as a dog who can hear - she just uses different methods of learning but loves just the same.

*Shotz also wrote Max 

Book Review: Everything Dogs (National Geographic Kids - always a treasure)

Everything Dogs: All the Canine Facts, Photos, and Fun That You Can Get Your Paws On! by Becky Baines with Dr. Gary Weitzman (National Geographic Kids, $12.95, 64 pages, 2012, ages 8-12, grades 3-7) (all photos are mine)

Lovely Big Book with Plenty of Pictures for the Little Ones!

A golden retriever with a tennis ball on the cover: what's with goldens or yellow labs on the cover of so many books or selling so many products anyway? Are they the blondes of dogdom?

Chapters include "Meet the Dogs,"

"A Dog's Life," "We are Family," and "Fun with Dogs," each with four oversized 2-page sections plus a photo gallery of dogs in action or the parts of a dog.

Wow! What a Book!

With dog photos almost life-sized,

your kids will soon find their favorites and keep changing their minds but with such wonderful pictures, they will carry the book around just to look at the pictures and while they do, they'll read a little bit - and remember it. They will learn about a dog's daily schedule (play, nap, eat and repeat) and the dog family tree, take a quiz to find the perfect dog for them, learn about famous dogs and working dogs and designer dogs and rescue dogs. On the page after the glossary they will find a quick quiz and hidden in the back are lists of books, movies, and websites.

This Book Will Last

Everything Dogs is 10 years old so a few minor facts are outdated but the photos never will be!

Book Review: Pepper Becoming (Unwanted dog becomes dearly loved)

Pepper Becoming: The Journey of an Unwanted Dog and the Man Who Wanted Her, by John Visconti and Pepper M. Visconti* (RSDS, 2018, 191 pages, $12.95)

Delightfully Funny and Touching

Occasionally someone will get a dog, fall in love, and advance into dog sports like agility or rally or obedience or tricks or nosework as a hobby, or, after the honeymoon is over, will realize the troubled dog has issues like leash reactivity or thunder phobia or separation anxiety, or perhaps is aggressive (or, like Pepper, all of them). Then the person hires a dog trainer and spends considerable time and money trying to make the dog feel more comfortable in her skin. More occasionally, the person learns so much and loves so deeply that he becomes a dog trainer himself.

Such was the case with our author, John Visconti, winner of the prestigious Maxwell Award for Best General Reference Book: 2015 for Fetch More Dollars for Your Dog Training Business.

The Story

Pepper was labelled a reactive dog at both her shelters, having been abandoned, adopted out and returned. She was a sickly shelter dog for two years until she met the love of her life, John Visconti.

Living on Long Island, after the death of his cat, Visconti volunteered to walk dogs at a shelter and ended up with a difficult dog that he fell in love with: the feeling was mutual for nine years. Five-year-old Pepper was the dog Visconti walked almost daily until they adopted each other. 

Visconti reads 15 dog training books and fortunately happens upon a positive-reinforcement trainer who takes him under her wing. He even shares a lot of training jargon and methodology for the reader, but, don't worry, it's not difficult to understand.

Dogs thrive on routine and Pepper was no exception. Moving from New York to North Carolina was a challenge but Visconti made sacrifices to keep the human-animal bond strong.

Overflowing with love for his dog, Visconti is the perfect dog owner who believes in and trusts his dog so much that eventually Pepper learns to generally overcome her aggression, resource guarding, and separation anxiety issues. Visconti even develops a 'recipe' for thunder phobia that is published in a professional dog training journal.

The Style

With very short chapters (that this reviewer loves) and a touching cover photo (also on the book's webpage here), Pepper Becoming is a book you will start and savor slowly for the unique humor, eventually reading faster and faster until the end of both the book and the fortunate life of the fabulous Pepper. Goodbyes are always so hard and Visconti takes us along with him and his dog.

The Videos

A book-end bonus is a list of URLs if you want to see Pepper in action. In addition, there are many more home videos of Pepper playing in her backyard, Pepper going through agility tunnels, Pepper learning new skills - and having fun!

Life After Pepper

Saying goodbye and letting go: Grief is the price we pay for love. And so Pepper's journey continues. . . . 

-----------------------------------------------

*Did you notice the co-author is Pepper the dog? What a lovely tribute.

Book Review: Sprinting Through No Man's Land (History of the Tour de France, 1919)(OT)

Sprinting Through No Man's Land: Endurance, Tragedy and Rebirth in the 1919 Tour de France, by Adin Dobkin (Little A, 2021, 295 pp, $24.95)

Intriguing Title, Cool Cover

How many readers know very much about the Tour de France? I think we know it is a bicycle race (probably only for men) in France, probably annually. We probably know of Lance Armstrong, the American who won several Tours and then was caught with his hand in the drug-enhancing cookie jar and lost his trophy. 

We probably know that the Tour winds its way through villages in France over several days (how many?) and that if we lived in Europe, the Tour would be more important to us. Sort of like the Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska, over several days.

An amazing little knowledge of the Tour for this readership who probably spent a lot of time on their bikes many years ago and now ride with their own children.

Sprinting

Not sure the Tour de France should be called a sprint. Being a race over several days and over different kinds of terrains, it is more of a marathon than the 100-yard dash.

No Man's Land

"No man's land" fits for part of the race through France, through cities, towns, and villages and all the land in between be they roads through fields or forests, over hill over dale. . . up and down mountains.

Endurance

The Tour de France is an endurance race (is that an oxymoron?) covering so much varied terrain over so many days and covering so many miles but this book tells of the 1919 race, before racers trained professionally for many months.

Tragedy

The reader will have to discover what the tragedy was and if it really was a tragedy for the race which was run the day after the Treaty of Versailles was signed.

Rebirth

After a war, it can take a long time for a country to recover. The Tour de France helped France come together after World War 1. The book begins with the end of the war and provides much fodder for discussion since we either seem to think recovery is immediate or we just don't think about it at all.

1919

Sprinting begins with a few of the 12 earlier Tour races and gives us a unique picture of a post-war culture and how long it takes to recover. In this instance, it is World War 1 in France, a good lesson for Americans to realize how Iraqis and Afghans are faring after the conflicts in their land. This may be the best lesson in Sprinting. The rest of the book is rather dry and historical. The map, however, comes in handy as does the list of characters - so many and with such unusual names - French!

Book Review: Damnation Spring (Timberrrr!)

Damnation Spring, A Novel, by Ash Davidson (Scribner, 2021, 464 pp, 14$)

Best. Book. Ever.

One year we named the "Book of the Year" early - in August. This year we may have found it in February - Damnation Spring it is! May I say it just may be the very best book I have ever read! Bar none.

If Norman Rockwell or Robert Frost were to write a book, this would be it. A marvelous storyteller, Ash Davidson has created a family saga with a slow environmental crisis that appeals to the heart. Sort of like an Aesop's Fable or a biblical parable, the lesson, obvious from the beginning, is couched within the story of a marriage and a family of generations and of the lumber industry in California (though I pretended it was in Washington or Idaho). And you may just take away some of the family's traditions - three squeezes of a hand ( I. Love. You.) or asking your young child, "Where did you get those dimples?" "At the dimple store." or "Where did you get those beautiful eyes?" "At the beautiful eye store."

Rhythmic Style

With lyrical writing, Davidson weaves for us one year (1977) in the lives of hard-working people who live off the earth, some, coarsely so. Like the range wars of a century ago between the farmers and the ranchers, Damnation's wars are between hippies and lumbermen: hippies who are tree-huggers, including a native boy from the neighborhood who becomes a tree doctor (PhD) and returns for a year of research and meeting up with an old flame, and loggers who grow old physically before their time - or die young, from accidents. ". . . Not a lot of second chances in the woods, . . . ." (p. 157) 

And Some Bad Stuff

Nosebleeds and numerous miscarriages - our protagonist has had eight - and babies that die at birth of birth defects. Could it be the herbicides?

And old-growth trees that take with them, the jobs, when they are gone. But when the hippies plant a skull (or do they?) and the state takes its time deciding to shut down the clear-cutting, no work is to be had. On top of winter rains stopping all work for a few months, it's a hard life and makes some people hard. They take chances and the reader smells the smells and sees the fog and feels the rain that permeates your bones.

Premonitions

The premonitions are all present from the very beginning but we read on because we are invested in the characters' lives and their loves and want to know who the winners will be, if any. There are good, good people and then there are others who may be family but family by birth not family by choice.

Even though I could foresee much of what would happen, I wanted to read it faster and faster and then, lo and behold - a surprise!

Chapters are titled "Rich," "Colleen" (his wife), "Chub" (their young son) but not written by them - just about them and a bit from their point of view, sometimes a chapter from each on the same day. Chapters are also titled with the month and day (we already know the year).

What I Would Do Differently

It is a long book that reads so quickly I can't imagine it needing to be abridged. But perhaps change the title and put a photograph of a forest on the cover, rather than the lovely painting. You might disagree. But you will agree that this is a gem of a novel!

(And yes, there are dogs: a debarked old dog and a nondescript Scout, both of whom are outdoor dogs on chains when not with their boy or with Rich walking through the woods.)

Book Review: The Cruelty is the Point (Trump . . . .)(OT)

The Cruelty is the Point: The past, present and future of Trump's America, by Adam Serwer (Random House Books, 2021, 358 pp, $28)

A series of timely topics, told in essay pairs, a before and after, of sorts. At first, I thought the first one in the pair was the essay (about 3-5 pages) followed by a much longer update but actually it is the other way around: a short introduction/update followed by the longer original essay.

Author Adam Serwer is a long-time Atlantic Monthly* writer on politics who combined a baker's dozen of Atlantic essays of his into the book, The Cruelty is the Point: The past, present and future of Trump's America.

This reviewer chose three topics (sections) to highlight: COVID, Stephen Miller, and Robert E. Lee.

COVID, Chapter 11, The Cruelty of the COVID Contract and The Coronavirus was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who was Dying

In an eye-opener of an essay, author Serwer brings in many aspects of living in America today, one of which is "A crime does not occur when white men stalk and kill a black stranger. A crime does occur when black people vote." (p. 232) Starting with this 'racial contract' of white innocence and black guilt, and going on to the people most affected by the pandemic - those who earn the least and who can't work from home because they are in service occupations like grocery store employees and meat packers, and many of whom happen to be illegal immigrants or the most recently arrived and those who don't yet know English fluently, Serwer provides new-to-us facts plus quotes from articles we may not have seen that make us think more seriously and perhaps change our mind. (If you can read that sentence easily, you will have no problem with Serwer's writing style.) The Trump Administration did not consider the lives of people dying worth the effort or money required to save them while the upper classes can remain safely at home and have their food delivered by those whose jobs put them in peril, and primarily in blue states.

Those people are a dime a dozen and the Administration said we had to accept the deaths of many of them if we were to re-open the economy. 

Stephen Miller, Chapter 7, The Cruelty of the Stephen Millers, and Not The Right Way

A recent history of immigration in the US shows us that the Obama Administration was actually more stringent with regards to immigrants and refugees than the Trump Administration. Both Miller and Trump are second-generation Americans and the reader follows the Miller family from their homeland to America through most of the chapter. We learn how changing laws protect Western European immigrants over Hispanics: legislation is changed when the current immigration wave is composed of people from another country or region.

Robert E. Lee, Chapter 2, The Cruelty of the Lost Cause, and The Myth of the Kindly General Lee

The title says it all. Lee wrote that ". . . slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and, most important, better than abolitionism; emancipation must wait for divine intervention." (p. 22) (What? Twisted logic? Read on.)

Other writings and actions of Lee will shock you.

All in All

Cruelty is a book for our times: essays on life in America today. You will keep this book and reread it in 10 years to compare how we fared as a culture in the interim. That is, if you can read through Serwer's convoluted sentence structure. But you can always skim over parts and still get the gist.

*simply the best magazine on current life I have seen since the now defunct FEER - The Far Eastern Economic Review

Book Review: Monster in the Middle (OT)(vertical families, marrying a family)

Monster in the Middle, by Tiphanie Yanique (Riverhead Books, 2021, 267 pp, $27)

Writing Style

This reviewer has never, in nearly 20 years, opened a review with comments about the author's writing style. Usually I spend a lot of words and sentences on the subject or plot, and reserve only a few sentences at the end for the author's style. 

I love the sentences in Monster in the Middle! They are short and varied - their length lends itself to lyricism and smoothness, a difficult way to write: even this review has compound and complex sentences. Obviously author Tiphanie Yanique, a college professor, has spent much time crafting her sentences that flow into each other. Or, maybe it is just her unique writing style. Regardless, you have to experience this!

What's it All About?

Besides a unique style, Monster has a unique plot to tell. The premise is that one does not marry a person but a family. The family has fine-tuned the person and resides within the person. We know this, of course, with visits from in-laws on holidays, with phone calls to nieces and nephews on their birthdays - and to grandparents - and from grandparents to our children. And we see it along the route of a marriage, as, with time, little quirks come out in our spouse that surprise us. We thought we knew him but life turns out differently.

A family is not only horizontal but also vertical. The 'horizontalness' refers to the extended family across neighborhood and cities and even countries while all families are vertical in that we come from our grandparents and our parents and hand on to the next generation. 

Race. Gender. Ethnicity. We are all of these.

We often find a map or two in a non-fiction book, but how many novels showcase a map in the first few pages, other than Monster? Your first clue to a unique storyteller's work of art. And this map highlights Alaska and the Virgin Islands and Guam as well as about a dozen US cities with dates. And with descriptions that tweak your interest: Map of an American Love Story - Denver, 2013, Way up there in the middle; Austin, 1989, Have to stop somewhere; Ft. Jackson, 1993, Because, well, manhood. (The author couldn't fit Africa in.)

The Cover Says it All

I have to spend a few words on a book's illustrations and cover, especially award-winning books such as this one. Monster's cover is one that appears best without the title and author's name. Then its meaning is more easily seen. (P.S. if you don't 'get' it, send me an email!)

So, What's It All About?

Two disparate people get married. Different races, different occupations, different home places. These make the two characters and their stories actually begin when their parents are young so a vertical history is revealed. 

So, now you know the gist. 

So, Was It a Good Book?

I hesitate saying this but it was a long difficult read and I read it quickly to get it over with. There is basically no action, no plot, even with excellent reviews. Nothing happens. The reader keeps waiting. It is, however, possibly a character study lending itself to discussions of our grandparents and our parents and how they grew up as well as discussions of great sentences and paragraphs. But, all in all, it is a short book that takes a long time to read: also, easy to forget. (And part is X-rated.)

Book Review: The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell (Army Reservist in Iraq, Infantry)(OT)

The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq, by John Crawford* (Riverhead, 2006, 221 pages, $16.99)

If you were infantry, you will race through this book, reliving it in one evening. If you were never infantry, but were Army or were even deployed, you will remember living parts of this book. Others may get lost in the details of weapons and the daily life - and the omnipresent four-letter words.

Author John Crawford is a college student, newly married and about to graduate - and in the Florida National Guard, a unit deployed to Iraq in 2002 at nearly the end of the conflict. But did his unit get to go home when their mission was completed? No, they kept getting attached to other units in-country and when a unit is attached, they are the bastard child: they don't feel a strong bond with the parent unit and the parent unit continues to favor their own guys, supplying them first. I know the difficulties: I was attached for many months in Afghanistan to a National Guard unit from a southern state (with very few females). Sort of like a sub-contractor: last hired and first fired.

War Stories

Crawford's book grew out of one story he wrote (the last chapter of his book) while deployed: an agent talked him into more stories. So, one never gets the whole story here - merely a collection of incidents with some of the same colleagues' names in different chapters (we never really get to know very many of the soldiers which is fine - it is the daily life that shines through).

The early days of Iraq may be more similar to the Vietnam Conflict than later years of Iraq or Afghanistan. For example, even though team cohesiveness may have been tighter (or always prevalent in the Infantry), it seems liquor and drugs were sort of available. Even five years later, this was not the case: discipline was rampant then. So, the chapter about 'borrowing' the motorcycle would have been unique to the early days in Iraq as well as visiting the young Iraqi women.

Military Hierarchy

One aspect that is probably always present is how higher-ranking individuals sometimes take credit for the feats of their subordinates and sometimes abscond with their privileges. I remember once in Afghanistan I was slated to go on a humanitarian assistance visit to a small village but a higher-ranking officer who had never been outside the wire took my place - his time was getting short and he may not have another opportunity. (On the other hand, I once gave up my seat on a helicopter visit so a subordinate who had never been aboard a chopper could have that experience.)

After an incident in which Crawford's unit took casualties: "That night we had a company meeting, where the battalion commander and the chaplain tried to speak words of encouragement to worried and angry soldiers. We were a team, they said. They told us to persevere and stay strong. Every soldier is important to the chain of command, and they were suffering right beside us. It was a good speech, but when the time came, neither the chaplain nor the battalion commander could remember the names of either of our soldiers who were hit." (p. 96)

And, "A little known fact in the army is that a soldier's happiness is directly proportional to the proximity of his chain of command. Our commander and first sergeant had tagged along in an attempt to get away from the battalion staff. It was a vacation for them, but for the rest of the company, sleeping right next door to them, it was pure torture." (p. 182) In other words, things relax the further downrange you are located. 

War Stays With You

Combat changes someone forever, even if the person is not wounded. Just being immersed in a different culture - the military or the military during a conflict. For some, R&R is difficult and I agree with one of the characters that it can be more difficult to return than to have never gone at all. These are words the author tells a fellow soldier upon his return to Iraq:  "I didn't tell him that being alone, with no one to watch your back, left you feeling naked and helpless. I spent most of my time watching rooftops and side roads, looking into my rear view mirror to make sure no one was creeping up on my car from behind. I didn't mention that every Arabic-looking person I saw gave me a funny feeling of anger inside, and that every time I saw someone sitting contentedly inside a coffee shop or restaurant, I wanted to yell at them, wake them up." (p. 173)

Talking to your spouse or kids in the evening from a combat zone can be a godsend or just the opposite. Your spouse talks about picking up dog poop and you talk about picking up brain remains.  Communicating home is a blessing in disguise or a true frustration.

And when our author was back in the US: "I went to the gas station yesterday to buy some cigarettes. An Arabic man was working behind the counter. He turned when he heard the door chime and gave me a broad smile. I walked out. I never wanted to hate anyone: it just sort of happens that way in a war."

The Last True Story

Crawford's book is a snapshot in time, in one location, with one Army unit, yet well worth the read.

*NPR Interview, John Crawford: The Accidental Soldier

Book TV (with the author)