Military Book Reviews

A stirring memoir in an unusual form, Letters to Sis by CW3 Cesare Giannetti is an intimate look into the everyday lives of ordinary servicemen, and a peek behind the curtain at the lives they leave behind.

A blend of non-fiction epistolary writing and narrative confession, this book is deeply personal and revealing about the author’s lived experiences, during his years before, during, and after serving in the US Army. Telling the story via letters gives the book genuine emotion and honesty in these scribbled snapshots of prose, while Giannetti’s dramatic accounts of his service fill in the blanks, providing […]

Author TB Stamper launches a searing blast of wartime memory in The Frog Hunter: A Story About the Vietnam War, an Inkblot Test and a Girl, a relentless memoir of Vietnam and the aftermath it wreaked for those soldiers who managed to come home.

From the author’s very first steps into the unknown, the story is engrossing and immersive, plunging readers into the swampy murk of Vietnam, along with all its unknown horrors, both physical and psychological. This memoir is also revelatory on a personal level, revealing Stamper in his pre-war state of mind – a clever rascal and […]

A riveting reflection on life, loss, service, and sacrifice, Playing Soldier by F. Scott Service is an original and intense memoir that shakes up one’s assumptions of a soldier’s life before, during, and after a conflict.

The majority of this book takes place during Service’s time in the military and while stationed in Iraq, but notably, most of the action takes place in his mind, in the gritty details of his internal monologue, the dark patterns of his thoughts, and the brutal conversations he has in the solitude of service; a soldier may not be allowed to speak his mind, […]