Those Who Have Borne the Battle (58 page)

The son of a World War II veteran, James Wright joined the marines at age seventeen and built an academic career as a historian upon his discharge. Earning a BA in history at Wisconsin State University, Platteville, and his MA and PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he became a professor at Dartmouth College in 1969. From 1998 to 2009, he served as president of Dartmouth—the only former marine to serve as an Ivy League president. In 2005, he began visiting wounded servicemen and -women in military hospitals. Since then, he has been a dedicated and effective advocate of our nation's veterans, raising $350,000 in seed money to start a counseling program to help wounded veterans pursue higher education after their service. He serves on the board of the Semper Fi Fund. The New England Board of Higher Education awarded him its Eleanor M. McMahon Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars recognized him with the Commander-in-Chief's Gold Medal of Merit Award. He has been featured in stories in the
New York Times
,
Boston Globe
,
Christian Science Monitor
, National Public Radio, and the
VFW Magazine
.
ABC—TV News
named him “Person of the Week.”

PublicAffairs is a publishing house founded in 1997. It is a tribute to the standards, values, and flair of three persons who have served as mentors to countless reporters, writers, editors, and book people of all kinds, including me.

 

I. F. STONE, proprietor of
I. F. Stone's Weekly
, combined a commitment to the First Amendment with entrepreneurial zeal and reporting skill and became one of the great independent journalists in American history. At the age of eighty, Izzy published
The Trial of Socrates,
which was a national bestseller. He wrote the book after he taught himself ancient Greek.

 

BENJAMIN C. BRADLEE was for nearly thirty years the charismatic editorial leader of
The Washington Post.
It was Ben who gave the
Post
the range and courage to pursue such historic issues as Watergate. He supported his reporters with a tenacity that made them fearless and it is no accident that so many became authors of influential, best-selling books.

 

ROBERT L. BERNSTEIN, the chief executive of Random House for more than a quarter century, guided one of the nation's premier publishing houses. Bob was personally responsible for many books of political dissent and argument that challenged tyranny around the globe. He is also the founder and longtime chair of Human Rights Watch, one of the most respected human rights organizations in the world.

For fifty years, the banner of Public Affairs Press was carried by its owner Morris B. Schnapper, who published Gandhi, Nasser, Toynbee, Truman, and about 1,500 other authors. In 1983, Schnapper was described by
The Washington Post
as “a redoubtable gadfly.” His legacy will endure in the books to come.

Peter Osnos,
Founder and Editor-at-Large

Copyright © 2012 by James Wright

 

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Excerpts from “What Every Soldier Should Know” from
Here, Bullet
. Copyright © 2005 by Brian Turner. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Alice James Books,
www.alicejamesbooks.org
.

 

Text set in 11.25 point Adobe Caslon Pro by the Perseus Books Group

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wright, James Edward, 1939–

Those who have borne the battle : A history of America's wars and those who fought them / James Wright.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-1-610-39073-6

E745.W945 2012

355.00973—dc23

2012004835