Draws from more than two centuries of soldiers' personal encounters with combat--through excerpts from letters, diaries, memoirs, audio recordings, film, and blogs--to capture the essence of the American military experience firsthand.

Provides the diaries of Midwest farm wife May Lyford Davis who chronicled what it was like to run their family farm from the turn of the twentieth century through World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II, tracing the evolution of farming from horses to tractors and other machinery.

Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs is the most intimate book ever written by William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch and one of the most celebrated literary outlaws of our time. Laid out as diary entries of the last nine months of Burroughs's life, Last Words spans the realms of cultural criticism, personal memoir, and fiction. Classic Burroughs concerns -- literature, U.S. drug policy, the state of humanity, his love for his...

Having embraced a life of solitude in his own hermitage, Thomas Merton finds his faith tested beyond his imagination when a visit to the hospital leads to a clandestine affair of the heart. Jolted out of his comfortable routine, Merton is forced to reassess his need for love and his commitment to celibacy and the monastic vocation. This astonishing volume traces Merton's struggle to reconcile his unexpected love with his sacred vows while continuing...