{"id":41117,"date":"2018-03-15T16:13:30","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T16:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/03\/15\/military-times-spring-reading-guide-grunts-generals-russians-and-keyboard-warriors-top-our-nonfiction-list\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T03:29:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T03:29:17","slug":"military-times-spring-reading-guide-grunts-generals-russians-and-keyboard-warriors-top-our-nonfiction-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/armytimes\/off-duty\/2018\/03\/15\/military-times-spring-reading-guide-grunts-generals-russians-and-keyboard-warriors-top-our-nonfiction-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Times Spring Reading Guide: Grunts, generals, Russians and keyboard warriors top our nonfiction list"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A first-time author takes you through boot camp and beyond, and a noted journalist explores the foibles of funding and fighting in Afghanistan while trying to deal with Pakistan. Others pieces of new military nonfiction illustrate the power of social media, from your smartphone to Russia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Check out our spring reviews below, in order of reading value and satisfaction. Prices are provided by the publishers; you may find better deals online or in your local bookstore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Click here<\/a> for our spring military fiction reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Eat the Apple: A Memoir <\/b>by Matt Young, Bloomsbury, 251 pages, $26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Recruit and You and I and We, in alternating voices, go from Marine boot camp to war and back, from 18-year-old boy to Young man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sound familiar? Maybe, but this is not your standard point-and-shoot remembrance. This is a fresh, imaginative reflection<\/a> full of revelations about becoming a fighter and bemoaning being one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe become grunts \u2026 meat for the grinder,\u201d says the veteran of three Iraq deployments (one voluntary). \u201cWe want to pay for what we think might be the sins accrued in our hard lives by the time we are 19 through violent death and become tragic heroes that instructors tell stories about in hushed tones.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tone is darkly comedic and in short chapters that include diagrams (definitely not PowerPoint), lists, scripts and even multiple choice. \u201cChoice is an illusion\u201d in training that creates a \u201cperson-thing\u201d whose \u201cforemost prerequisite to existence is that we lose not only our own humanity but remove that of our enemy as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young learns that \u201can improperly looped belt shows a lack of attention to detail, which will result in this person causing the deaths of Marines in combat.\u201d If he repeats a task \u201cit will become automatic, ingrained in the muscle forever.\u201d And there are contradictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are told the Marines don\u2019t see race,\u201d that \u201cwe are green,\u201d yet \u201cin the fleet we call one another wetback and honky and twinkie and spade and fence jumper and porch monkey and cracker and gook and round eye.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As brothers, Marines huddle together against winter winds, and \u201cit\u2019s not gay if it\u2019s for body heat.\u201d We \u201cthrow around faggot and queer and poke fun at the effeminate because we\u2019ve learned to fear those intimate feelings, those intense moments of love that well inside us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t