Anthony Swofford's grandfather fought in WWII; his father fought in Vietnam; and he - a directionless, testosterone-battered teenager - became a scout/sniper in the marines and fought in the Gulf War. His account of that time is also part of a lineage - after Wilfred Owen, Norman Mailer, Michael Herr and Tim O'Brien, it brings the raw and searing tradition of soldiers' stories up to date. In the West we have become convinced that it is possible to fight a war largely without casualties. Swofford's brutally honest and timely book shows that every human being trained to kill another is a casualty. Swofford endures six months of sand-ridden hell with his fellow marines (or 'jarheads'), tortured by boredom and fear. He suffers physical abuse from a training officer, is betrayed by his girlfriend at home, puts a loaded gun in his mouth, threatens to kill a fellow soldier and is shot at by both the enemy and another unit of the US military. At the end of the war, Swofford hikes for miles through a landscape of incinerated Iraqi soldiers and is nearly killed in a booby-trapped bunker. A harrowing yet inspiring portrait of a tormented consciousness struggling for reconciliation and peace, JARHEAD is authentic, revelatory and brilliantly crafted.