LibGuides: Veterans Week Online Books: Home

In this guide, find ebooks related to the Veterans Week Book Display.
Physical books are available at the Library.

After Combat by Marian Eide; Michael Gibler
Publication Date: 2018
In modern warfare, no deployment meets the expectations laid down by stories of Appomattox, Iwo Jima, or Tet. Stuck behind a desk or the wheel of a truck, many of today's veterans feel they haven't even been to war.

After Combat bridges the gap between sensationalized media and reality by telling war's unvarnished stories. Participating soldiers, sailors, marines, and air force personnel describe combat in the ways they believe it should be understood. In this collection of interviews, veterans speak anonymously with pride about their own strengths and accomplishments, with gratitude for friendships and adventures, and also with shame, regret, and grief, while braving controversy, misunderstanding, and sanction.
Last and Greatest Battle: Finding the Will, Commitment, and Strategy to End Military Suicides by John Bateson
Publication Date: 2015
In the first book devoted exclusively to the problem of military suicides, Bateson surveys the history of suicide in the United States military from the Civil War to the present day and outlines a plan to save lives using the stories of individual soldiers to illuminate the unique challenges faced by American troops today.

Transitioning from the front lines to the home front is difficult for many service members, and many need help both during and after their deployments. But even though the military is spending millions of dollars on suicide prevention programs, record numbers of soldiers continue to take their lives. To that end, Bateson outlines a plan of action. If the military works to remove stigma, to make treatment more effective and more accessible, and to limit risk factors for suicide in the first place by taking measures like reducing the number and length of deployments and adjusting pre-deployment training to take into account the way that wars are waged today, an end to the problem of military suicide is as possible as it is essential.
Red, White, and True by Tracy Crow (Editor)
Publication Date: 2014
A collection of 32 essays written by both veterans and family members describing their experiences from conflicts spanning World War II to Afghanistan.
The Rifle by Andrew Biggio
Publication Date: 2021
The Rifle is an inspirational story and hero's journey of a 28-year-old U.S. Marine, Andrew Biggio, who returned home from combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, full of questions about the price of war. He found answers from those who survived the costliest war of all -- WWII veterans. It began when Biggio bought a 1945 M1 Garand Rifle, the most common rifle used in WWII, to honor his great uncle. When Biggio showed the gun to his neighbor, WWII veteran Corporal Joseph Drago, it unlocked memories Drago had kept unspoken for 50 years. On the spur of the moment, Biggio asked Drago to sign the rifle. Thus began this Marine's mission to find as many WWII veterans as he could, get their signatures on the rifle, and document their stories. 96 signatures now cover that rifle, each a reminder of the price of war and the courage of our soldiers.
Service in a Time of Suspicion by Michelle Sandhoff
Publication Date: 2017
On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda launched four coordinated attacks on the United States, killing 2,977 people. These events and the government's subsequent “War on Terror” refueled long-standing negative stereotypes about Muslims and Islam among many Americans. And yet thousands of practicing Muslims continued to serve or chose to enlist in the U.S. military during these years.

In Service in a Time of Suspicion, fifteen such service members talk about what it means to be Muslim, American, and a uniformed member of the armed services in the 21st century. These honest accounts remind us of our shared humanity.
Soul Survivors by Kirsten Holmstedt
Publication Date: 2016
Life is tough for veterans, especially female veterans. They have much to deal with and much to heal from: combat, physical and psychological wounds, sexual harassment and assault, trauma, stress, chains of command, the VA. Now more than ever these veterans are facing their problems head on. In this inspiring new book, Kirsten Holmstedt, trusted chronicler of women soldiers and veterans, tells the ups-and-downs stories of veterans struggling with the aftereffects of military service.
Veterans' Journeys Home by Lori Holyfield
Publication Date: 2015
Veterans' Journeys Home is a vivid portrayal of military life and its aftermath for US troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Highlighting the challenges US veterans face in today's changing military culture, the book depicts the haunting and visceral memories of returning soldiers, conversations with mental health providers, and offers an alternative approach to healing the emotional wounds of war. It combines a moving narrative with a penetrating analysis of the welfare and post-conflict treatment of veterans.

Minimal Damage by H. Lee Barnes
Publication Date: 2013
In seven stories and a novella, veterans search for dignity in a civilian life that has no need for men who were soldiers. Finding themselves psychically scarred, in crisis, on the fringes of society, or in battle with their memories, these men are living 'like warts on America's ass.'

In war, chance, luck, and arbitrary timing conspire to determine a soldier's fate. As civilians, the same uncontrollable forces influence who finds a place in society and who is doomed to keep searching. With emotion, humor, and clarity, Barnes creates characters who show us what it is to live with the trauma of having experienced combat. The fractured souls and lives of these men remind us that the damage doesn't remain on the battlefield.
On the Shores of Welcome Home by Bruce Weigl
Publication Date: 2019
In this award-winning collection of poems, Bruce Weigl meditates on the ghosts and the grace one encounters in life's second act. A celebrated poet and veteran of the Vietnam War, Weigl offers a nuanced sense of aging as a departure and death as a returning home. With a sage's eye for mindfulness and a soldier's longing for the country where he served, Weigl's poems reveal the long scars left by Vietnam and the new possibilities one encounters in the wake of life-altering experiences.

War Flower by Brooke King
Publication Date: 2019
Brooke King has been asked over and over what it's like to be a woman in combat, but she knows her answer is not what the public wants to hear. The answers people seek lie in the graphic details of war—the sex, death, violence, and reality of it all as she experienced it. In her riveting memoir, King breaks her silence and reveals the truth about her experience as a soldier in Iraq. The story of a girl who went to war and returned home a woman, War Flower gathers the enduring remembrances of a soldier coming to grips with post-traumatic stress disorder. As King recalls her time in Iraq, she reflects on what violence does to a woman and how the psychic wounds of combat are unwittingly passed down from mother to children. For veterans such as King, the toughest lesson of service is that in the mind, some wars never end—even after you come home.
The Longer We Were There by Steven Moore
Publication Date: 2019
The Longer We Were There follows a part-time soldier's experience over seven years in the Iowa Army National Guard. He enlisted at 17 into the infantry, then bounces between college classes, army training, disaster relief, civilian jobs, a deployment in Afghanistan — first on the Afghan-Pakistani border, then into a remote valley in the Hindu Kush Mountains — and finally comes home.

His stories are about having one foot on each side of the civilian-military divide, the difficulty of describing one side to those on the other, and how, as a consequence of this difficulty, that divide gets replicated within the self.

Fields of Combat by Erin P. Finley
Publication Date: 2011
Both heartbreaking and hopeful, Fields of Combat tells the story of how American veterans and their families navigate the return home. Following a group of veterans and their their personal stories of war, trauma, and recovery, Erin P. Finley illustrates the devastating impact PTSD can have on veterans and their families. Finley sensitively explores issues of substance abuse, failed relationships, domestic violence, and even suicide and also challenges popular ideas of PTSD as incurable and permanently debilitating.

Drawing on rich, often searing ethnographic material, Finley examines the cultural, political, and historical influences that shape individual experiences of PTSD and how its sufferers are perceived by the military, medical personnel, and society at large.
Art Therapy with Veterans by Rachel Mims (Editor)
Publication Date: 2021
With both personal and professional insight from a range of contributors, this informative guide highlights the use of art therapy in a range of settings to support military veterans. It offers rare insight into the effectiveness of art therapy in supporting veterans who are processing military sexual trauma, moral injury, and countertransference, filling essential gaps in knowledge within this area.
Music Therapy with Military and Veteran Populations by Rebecca Vaudreuil (Editor)
Publication Date: 2021
Combining essential information, professional insights, and lived experiences, this book offers a unique overview of the use of music therapy with active-duty service members, veterans, and other military-connected populations in the United States.

This book explores the integration of music therapy into traditional treatment programs for service members and veterans particularly those with TBI and PTSD. Throughout, it emphasizes the importance of music in military culture, highlighting the benefits of this approach with military communities. Personal accounts from military families are included.
Afterwar by Nancy Sherman
Publication Date: 2015
Sherman draws on in-depth interviews with servicemen and women to paint a richly textured and compassionate picture of the moral and psychological aftermath of America's longest wars. She explores how veterans can go about reawakening their feelings without becoming re-traumatized; how they can replace resentment with trust; and the changes that need to be made in order for this to happen--by military courts, VA hospitals, and the civilians who have been shielded from the heaviest burdens of war.

Sherman argues that some psychological wounds of war need a kind of healing through moral understanding that is the special province of philosophical engagement and listening.
Wounded Warriors: A Soldier's Story of Healing through Birds by Robert C. Vallieres; Jacquelyn M. Howard
Publication Date: 2014
Robert Vallieres struggled to find his "new normal" when he returned home after serving in the military. An accident in Kuwait left him suffering from traumatic brain injury (TBI), leaving him in constant pain. After clinics, bottles of painkillers, and behavior modification pills, hope seemed to vanish. Then a local weekly newspaper ad caught his eye: a bird-watching trip to see raptors in the mountains of New Hampshire. An Emily Dickinson poem that states, "Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all," sprang to his mind.

This book is his story of self-healing from crippling invisible wounds through the help of birds. His story of recovery offers a winged hope to thousands of military personnel who suffer these physical and mental battles.
After the War: Surviving PTSD and Changing Mental health Culture by Stéphane Grenier
Publication Date: 2018
After serving in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide and civil war, Lieutenant Colonel Stéphane Grenier returned to Canada haunted by his experiences. Facing PTSD and an archaic establishment, he spent ten years confronting -- and changing -- the military mental health system from within. Coining the term “Operational Stress Injury” to allow the military to see mental injury in the same light as a physical wound, Grenier founded the Operational Stress Injury Social Support program that provides help for mentally injured soldiers and veterans. Since retiring from the military in 2012, his groundbreaking approach has been adopted by civilian society. Through his social enterprise Mental Health Innovations, Grenier delivers his direct “walk the talk” method to improve mental well being in government and business.