Roadside bombs. Brutal conditions in hostile territory. Life-shattering injuries. The daunting challenges of returning to civilian life. For many Iraq War veterans, everywhere is the front line.
Yvonne Latty’s In Conflict captures the unheard voices, unpredictable experiences, and personal photographs of 25 Iraq War veterans whose lives have been changed forever. Their stories are as diverse as their backgrounds. Some are permanently disfigured. Others support the war effort and are eager to return to it. Still others feel they fought in vain for all the wrong reasons. Men and women, from all branches and ranks, Republican and Democrat, straight and gay, immigrants and natives, hailing from all parts of the country, these 25 remarkable veterans represent America and its complexity.
Over a million soldiers have served in Iraq, and most will be coming home. In Conflictanswers the question so often asked of them: What happened? Their honest answers and unpredictable accounts also make a larger point – that our veterans deserve to be heard. What they say will change the way you think about the war.
Yvonne Latty is the author of We Were There: Voices of African American Veterans from World War II to the War in Iraq. (Harper Collins/Amistad 2004) A native of New York City, She earned a BFA in Film/Television and a MA in Journalism from New York University before becoming a reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News and an adjunct professor of journalism at Villanova University. She lives with her family in Philadelphia, PA.
Praise for In Conflict
“Yvonne Latty’s In Conflict is a powerful reminder that there are countless stories out there to be told about the young men and women fighting our wars, stories unlike anything we’ve heard before. And Latty writes these profiles with great respect, showing us the humanity, emotions, and even humor of these individuals who have witnessed the realities of warfare firsthand. They are, like this book, truly unforgettable.”
—Andrew Carroll, editor of the New York Times bestseller War Letters
“Yvonne Latty is a terrific reporter and interviewer with an eye for the telling nugget, the magic detail, that can explain a life. In this remarkable book, she lays out the real story of the war in Iraq in a way that no Bush administration official or CNN reporter could ever approach. Latty lets the soldiers tell the tale, with all the pride, fear, disillusionment and pain that combat veterans can express. The truth about war is that there is never a good one, and Latty allows us to see that in unpretty, unrelenting detail. She ultimately inspires envy in her journalist colleagues, because she delivers the goods and covers fresh ground in a way that the rest of us should have thought of, but simply never did.”
—Alfred Lubrano, author of Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams, columnist, and feature writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and a regular commentator for NPR.
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