"El Paso artist Tom Lea was commissioned by Life Magazine to paint the war as it was being experienced by U.S. and Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen. Along with his sketchbook, Lea carried on these assignments his "record of work", a notebook in which he recorded observations and details on the images he hoped to create from the events he had seen." "Brendan M. Greeley, Jr. has collected virtually all of Tom Lea's firsthand accounts of his assignments for Life, along with his powerful sketches and unforgettable paintings, and placed them in context, along with photographs and research focusing on the people, places, and wartime events encountered by Tom Lea. Drawing on previously unpublished sources - the artist's diary, letters to the Texas historian J. Frank. Dobie, oral interviews, and archival materials from Texas and national collections - Greeley presents in The Two Thousand Yard Stare a uniquely comprehensive and sustained treatment of Lea's creative accomplishments during World War II." "This well-documented and astonishingly illustrated volume will fascinate those interested in the realistic depiction of war, in both images and words. Also a must-read for students, scholars, and collectors of the artist's work, The Two Thousand Yard Stare: Tom Lea's World War II is a brilliant compendium of the work and thought of one of America's most compelling painters and writers."--BOOK JACKET.

A grunt’s-eye view of the Vietnam War through hundreds of personal photos Marc Waszkiewicz served three tours (1967, 1968, 1969) as an artillery forward observer with the U.S. Marine Corps in Vietnam, where he took thousands of photos capturing the beauty, drudgery, hilarity, and horror of the war. 1,000-Yard Stare collects the best of these in a book that presents an unvarnished grunt’s-eye view of the Vietnam War. These are amazing, well-shot photos--most of them color, many of them truly arresting--of Marines in the field, in camp, on base, fighting, patrolling, writing, drinking, carrying on. Some have the feeling of candid snapshots while others are more composed (Waszkiewicz was, and is, an amateur photographer), with subjects ranging from a gunner calculating ranges with pencil and protractor and a chaplain conducting a battlefield mass to grunts smoking illicit substances while pretending to fish and images of barbed wire twisting in the jungle and watchtowers at twilight. Also included are photographs from Waszkiewicz’s postwar decades of coming to terms with his experiences, such as a sequence of poignant photos from The Wall in Washington and his trip back to Vietnam. This is a visual memoir of the war.

PTSD has been documented throughout history since man first began clubbing each other with rocks. Our understanding of this debilitation has only increased or become more visible in our digital age. In the past it was seen as a source of shame and embarrassment, not just for those suffering PTSD, but also their families and loved ones. The dark ages are gone we hope. We now strive to understand the effects of war on the minds of our men, women and families. Garry Willmott, in his book, has highlighted those who have suffered similar and often the very same symptoms documented throughout the centuries. Garry's mix of documented research and fact, combined with a somewhat personal narrative of each story and sufferer, provides us with a better eye-opening experience of PTSD. The reader can now put two and two together and begin to understand their own experiences of their grandfather, father, brother or sister, and how they returned from war, conflict or trauma as 'damaged goods'. Thanks for the opportunity to be a part of this project. Readers will not be disappointed. - Craig Roach, Gallipoli artist and avid historian, Gallipoli, Turkey. Money from book sales will be donated to the Webb family.

Cooling Out: Has the World Changed, or Have I Changed? -- Notes -- Index

Jack Leninger spent a year humping the boonies as a rifleman in the 4th Infantry Division. Through air strikes, firefights, and ambushes, he fought the grunt's war, the war the base-camp commandos never saw. With operational reports, eyewitness accounts, journals, and photos, Leninger captures the terror and chaos of Vietnam in all its electrifying intensity. The living nightmares behind the headlines and TV news are all here, the tragic mistakes, the selfless courage, the precious young lives lost. All the bloody horrors that etched the "1,000-yard stare" into the faces of countless young American men, searing images into their minds that would last for all their lives...

The long-awaited sequel to THE BULLETPROOF COFFIN! When indie publisher Image Nation hires Shaky Kane to write and draw his own comic book, the artist finally finds himself free from the tedium of visualizing the geriatric ramblings of washed-up hack, David Hine. See the awful consequences as jealous rivalry leads to a bloody showdown on the convention floor.

In twelve months between 2007 and 2008, Christopher Buckley coped with the passing of his father, William F. Buckley, the father of the modern conservative movement, and his mother, Patricia Taylor Buckley, one of New York's most glamorous and colorful socialites. He was their only child and their relationship was close and complicated. Writes Buckley: "They were not - with respect to every other set of loving, wonderful parents in the world - your typical mom and dad." As Buckley tells the story of their final year together, he takes readers on a surprisingly entertaining tour through hospitals, funeral homes, and memorial services, capturing the heartbreaking and disorienting feeling of becoming a 55-year-old orphan. Buckley maintains his sense of humor by recalling the words of Oscar Wilde: "To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness." Just as Calvin Trillin and Joan Didion gave readers solace and insight into the experience of losing a spouse, Christopher Buckley offers consolation, wit, and warmth to those coping with the death of a parent, while telling a unique personal story of life with legends.

Equal parts poetry collection and adult coloring book, The Million Mile Stare is the second collaboration between siblings, Dorian Paul Rogers and Gabrielle Fludd. The book's title is a reference to the thousand-yard stare, a war term related to the distant, and sometimes soulless, gaze of a shell-shocked soldier. Rogers' poetry gives voice to the childhood trauma he experienced growing up as a bi-racial child in East Cleveland, Ohio and Albany, Georgia. Fludd, a visual artist and illustrator, created accompanying artworks in black and white with intricate designs in order to allow readers to color and more deeply reflect on the written words. Rogers' and Fludd's collaboration gives unique perspectives on issues related to self-love, self-identity, race, education, colorism, and socio-economics. The Million Mile Stare aims to provide a sense of catharsis to readers as they explore the written words while creating new art of their own through coloring.

It all started because of a rifle. 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, a U.S. Army soldier who died on the hills of the Italian countryside. 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. For two years, Biggio traveled across the country to interview America’s last-living WWII veterans. Each time he put the M1 Garand Rifle in their hands, their eyes lit up with memories triggered by holding the weapon that had been with them every step of the war. With each visit and every story told to Biggio, the veterans signed their names to the rifle. 96 signatures now cover that rifle, each a reminder of the price of war and the courage of our soldiers.

"Bac Si," which is Vietnamese for Doctor, takes the reader on a journey from innocence, into the jungles of Viet Nam, and back to innocence. In 1968, the United States Army conducted tests using LSD on volunteers, to determine how long a subject being interrogated, could "hold out" under the influence of the drug. Could this interrogation technique weaken the will of prisoners being questioned about military intelligence matters. Over 4 decades later, questions about interrogation techniques are still being asked. Lieutenant Thomas Staffieri, a Navy Psychologist, with a background in languages, is taken out of his role as a therapist, and propelled into behaviors he could never have imagined, even growing up in a grimy Midwest steel town. The reader witnesses Staffieri evolving from student, to psychologist, to Naval Officer, to successful therapist and writer, yet harboring a haunting secret from his duty as a "non-combatant." He had the good fortune, however, to have met, early on, someone so important in his life, who could be the only one who might free him from the demons that came at night. "Bac Si" is the exciting saga of war and love, and of innocence, loss of innocence, and the recovery of innocence.