This We'll Defend

"In this collection of thematically connected essays, Crenshaw shows the complex and often dark undercurrents of America's obsession with war, guns, and military service. In 1990, in his final days of basic training, the Gulf War broke out and changed the trajectory of Crenshaw's life in unexpected ways. Although he watched the Kuwait Invasion unfold on television alongside his fellow trainees and thought he was sure to go, he did not actively serve overseas in Operation Desert Storm. That tension--having trained to fight, but never actually doing so--informs his status as kind of embedded observer, one who is at once of a culture, but outside of it at the same time. Using his experience as someone who's not a civilian, but not a combat vet--and the complicated internal strife that comes with that distinction--Crenshaw explores the question of what military service means and how we define soldiers in America, particularly in the military-friendly South"--