Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq - Tapa dura

The Iraqi war is distinguished by something new in the annals of armed conflict: soldier bloggers. Jason Christopher Hartley was one of the first to write a blog and his blog, Just Another Soldier, was one of the first to be written about (mentions in Time, the Wall Street Journal and an AP story). Now in book form, this is one soldier's view of the war... from the ground up. Jason Christopher Hartley, born in Salt Lake City, raised Mormon, joined the National Guard at age 17 and had been a career weekend soldier for 13 years. Then in 2003 his unit was deployed to Iraq, where he spent 11 months in the Sunni Triangle. Rather than resent that his weekend service has suddenly put him in harm's way, he's elated to be doing the real business of soldiering. From K-rations to dead civilians to extreme boredom punctuated by moments of extreme fear, Just Another Soldier takes the reader into the day-to-day experience of the Iraqi war. In addition to putting a human face on the Iraqi soldier, Just Another Soldier puts a human face on the country of Iraq; its culture and its people.