The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of distinction between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
-- Sir William Francis Butler
The recent wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan have generated gripping coverage from some of our most accomplished writers and correspondents, and Boots on the Ground collects the best new writing about our troops in the field. They include Mike Sager, who profiles marines training in the California desert for war in Afghanistan; John Laurence, who follows the elite 101st Airborne into a firefight at Baghdad airport; Evan Wright, who files a dispatch from Afghanistan with Canadian and American reconnaissance teams; Peter Boyer and David Levine, who explore the resignation of U.S. Marine Reserve Corps Major Scott Ritter from the United Nations arms inspection team sent to Iraq. These writers' stories offer new and deeper perspectives on the challenges and setbacks our soldiers face in modern combat, and together create a gripping portrait of the front lines in the ongoing war against terrorism.