Resources for Veterans

This book addresses mental health treatment for veterans and active military personnel. In addition to examining foundational practices in the sub-field, it contains specifically tailored content concerning the recent collapse of the United States (US) installed Afghanistan government. The book is conscious of the myriad of complex emotions that veterans who fought for the past twenty years may be experiencing.

Breaking Ranks brings a new and deeply personal perspective to the war in Iraq by looking into the lives of six veterans who turned against the war they helped to fight. Based on extensive interviews with each of the six, the book relates why they enlisted, their experiences in training and in early missions, their tours of combat, and what has happened to them since returning home.

This comprehensive, quantitative assessment of how injury sustained by service members deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan affects their subsequent labor market earnings also explores the extent to which retirement and disability payments compensate for any resulting earnings losses.

The Wounded Warrior Project has developed programs to help care for injured service members and veterans. This report describes how project alumnus respondents are faring in domains related to mental health and resiliency, physical health, and employment and finances.

From September 1990 to June 1991, the UK deployed 53,462 military personnel in the Gulf War. After the end of the conflict, anecdotal reports of various disorders affecting troops who fought in the Gulf began to surface. This mysterious illness was given the name "Gulf War Syndrome" (GWS). This book is an investigation into this recently emergent illness, particularly relevant given ongoing UK deployments to Iraq, describing how the illness became a potent symbol for a plethora of issues, anxieties, and concerns.

The federal government’s goal of awarding 3 percent of all prime-contract dollars to service- disabled veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSBs) (Bush, 2004; U.S. Congress, 2003,1999) has not yet been achieved. The objective of this report is to identify barriers to federal contracting with such firms. It summarizes findings and presents recommendations from analyses of quantitative data on service-disabled veterans and of interviews with SDVOSBs and the federal contracting personnel who work with them.

Military caregivers are an essential part of our nation's ability to care for returning wounded warriors. Far too often, their own needs are neglected. The RAND Corporation and the Elizabeth Dole Foundation lay the groundwork to inform policy and program development relative to the needs of military caregivers that often differ from the needs of the general caregiving population.

War-related separations challenge families in many ways. The worry and uncertainty associated with combat deployments provokes anxiety in family members left at home. Lengthy separations may challenge the personal, social, and economic coping resources of families at home. In this war, thanks to medical advances, many service members who previously would have died of their injuries are returning home to live long, although altered lives. This work will be of use to graduate students and researchers in family studies, social work, counseling, military science, psychology and sociology.

Eleven companies cofounded the 100,000 Jobs Mission in 2011 to promote veteran employment, with a goal of hiring 100,000 veterans by 2020. Reflecting on the first three years of operation, JPMorgan Chase & Co. asked the RAND Corporation to capture the lessons and experiences from the 100,000 Jobs Mission to identify further improvements to veteran employment opportunities.

Between 2000 and 2011, younger veterans were more likely to be unemployed than younger non-veterans. This difference falls rapidly with age and time. The evidence supports the hypothesis that veteran unemployment reflects engagement in job search.

This report offers recommendations and guidance for improving processes and infrastructure to allow DoD and VA to respond more strategically and effectively to the increasing prevalence of PTSD among US service members and veterans.

The scars of war take many forms: the limb lost, the illness brought on by a battlefield exposure, and, for some, the psychological toll of encountering an extremely traumatic event. PTSD Compensation and Military Service presents a thorough assessment of how the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs evaluates veterans with possible posttraumatic stress disorder and determines the level of disability support to which they are entitled. The book presents a history of mental health disability compensation of military personnel and reviews the current compensation and pension examination procedure and disability determination methodology.

A comprehensive study of the post-deployment health-related needs associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression, and traumatic brain injury among servicemembers returning from Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, the health care system in place to meet those needs, gaps in the care system, and the costs associated with these conditions and with providing quality health care to all those in need.

Making War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their families at and around the US Army’s Fort Hood in central Texas. Making War at Fort Hood is the first ethnography to examine the everyday lives of the soldiers, families, and communities who personally bear the burden of America’s most recent wars.

Intimate profiles of five Marines who fought together in a bloody battle called Operation Cochise portray, in large part in the searing language of the veterans themselves, the pain and squalor of the war and its indelible after-effects.

The authors offer detailed analyses of current debates over integrating women into combat roles and the proper approach to confronting sexual harassment with the ranks. A survey of ROTC cadets provides additional data on the attitudes of future leaders. The book also identifies important ways in which female personnel can enhance effectiveness as the military adjusts to its changing role in the twenty-first century, particularly in peacekeeping operations.

If We Must Die is a narrative and compilation of commentaries by African American leaders, intellectuals, and average citizens on wars fought by the United States. The book uses the rich material of political and social commentary as it seeks to articulate the concerns, mood, and memory of African Americans in the context of global political realities.

Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting the most basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.

A Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq, David Kilcullen's vision of war dramatically influenced America's decision to rethink its military strategy in Iraq and implement "the surge." Now, in The Accidental Guerrilla, Kilcullen provides a remarkably fresh perspective on the War on Terror. Kilcullen takes us "on the ground" to uncover the face of modern warfare, illuminating both the big global war (the "War on Terrorism") and its relation to the associated "small wars" across the globe: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Chechnya, Pakistan and North Africa.

What does it take to become a Marine Officer? This engaging book transports readers through the culture shock of Marine Officer Candidates School, a ten-week physical, intellectual, and emotional testing ground that every fourth candidate fails to complete. The Sergeant Instructors' intensity is palpable as candidates are made to strip away civilian habits and attitudes, replacing them the Marine Corps ethos in the hopes of becoming officers. Anecdotes and personal recollections of OCS by two generations of officers provide instructive, poignant, and humorous interludes for the reader.

During the late nineteenth century, competitive party politics in American democracy led to the rapid expansion of benefits for Union Civil War veterans and their families. Blending original historical research with political analysis, Skocpol shows how governmental institutions, electoral rules, political parties, and earlier public policies combined to determine both the opportunities and the limits within which social policies were devised and changed by reformers and politically active social groups over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

An original and groundbreaking book that examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Drawing on his years of experience working with Vietnam veterans, Shay illustrates how the Odyssey can be read as a metaphor for the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road back to civilian life. He also explains how veterans recover, and advocates changes to American military practice that will protect future servicemen and servicewomen while increasing their fighting power.

Facing the Mountain is an unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe. Based on Daniel James Brown's extensive interviews with the families of the protagonists as well as deep archival research, it portrays the kaleidoscopic journey of four Japanese-American families and their sons, who volunteered for 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible. But this is more than a war story. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to shutter the businesses they had spent decades building, surrender their homes for pennies on the dollar, and submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil.

This work is a powerful account of war and homecoming. The author served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq. But this book is not just about battle itself. It is also an unflinching portrayal of the toll war exacts on the men and women who are fighting it.

In The Turning, Andrew E. Hunt reclaims the history of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), an organization that transformed the antiwar movement by placing Vietnam veterans in the forefront of the nationwide struggle to end the war. Misunderstood by both authorities and radicals alike, VVAW members were mostly young men who had served in Vietnam and returned profoundly disillusioned with the rationale for the war and with American conduct in Southeast Asia.

Soldiers tell of their experiences during the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, the siege of Khe Sanh, the Tet Offensive, the Fall of Saigon and at other times during the Vietnam war.

A Rift in the Earth tells the remarkable story of the ferocious "art war" that raged between 1979 and 1984 over what kind of memorial should be built to honor the men and women who died in the Vietnam War. The story intertwines art, politics, historical memory, patriotism, racism, and a fascinating set of characters, from those who fought in the conflict and those who resisted it to politicians at the highest level.

In Home from the War, the award-winning author and noted psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton offers a powerful critique of American militarism during the Vietnam War. Recognized as the ultimate text for those working with Vietnam veterans, the book's insights have had enormous influence among psychologists and psychiatrists all over the world.

Wartime military service is held up as a marker of civic duty and patriotism, yet the rewards of veteran status have never been equally distributed. Certain groups of military veterans-women, people of color, LGBTQ people, and former service members with stigmatizing conditions, "bad paper" discharges, or criminal records-have been left out of official histories, excised from national consciousness, and denied state recognition and military benefits. Chronicling the untold stories of marginalized veterans in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Service Denied uncovers the generational divides, cultural stigmas, and discriminatory policies that affected veterans during and after their military service.

This book tells the full story of the Comanche Code Talkers for the first time. Drawing on interviews with all surviving members of the unit, their original training officer, and fellow soldiers, as well as military records and news accounts, the author follows the group from their recruitment and training to their active duty in World War II and on through their postwar lives up to present.

In examining how the veterans' movement inscribed martial citizenship onto American law, politics, and culture, A Nation of Veterans offers a new history of the U.S. welfare state that highlights its longstanding connection with warfare. It shows how a predominantly white and male group such as military veterans was at the center of social policy debates in the interwar and postwar period and how women and veterans of color were often discriminated against or denied access to their benefits.

In Our Veterans, Suzanne Gordon, Steve Early, and Jasper Craven explore the physical, emotional, social, economic, and psychological impact of military service and the problems that veterans face when they return to civilian life. The authors critically examine the role of advocacy organizations, philanthropies, corporations, and politicians who purport to be 'pro-veteran.' They describe the ongoing debate about the cost, quality, and effectiveness of healthcare provided or out-sourced by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). They also examine generational divisions and political tensions among veterans, as revealed in the tumultuous events of 2020, from Black Lives Matter protests to the Trump-Biden presidential contest.

The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont. Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. In a time when the questions World War II raised regarding race and democracy in America remain troublingly relevant and still unanswered, this meticulously researched retelling makes for urgently necessary reading.

The Last Good War is a chronicle of courage and hardship, sacrifice and determination. The harsh reality of combat is tempered by tender, poignant moments, and the overwhelming anguish of lost brothers-in-arms sits alongside stories of enduring friendships.

This enduring document commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a collection of touching photographs capturing the intense emotional response the monument provokes from virtually all its visitors.

In this dramatic history of race relations during the Vietnam War, James E. Westheider illustrates how American soldiers in Vietnam grappled with many of the same racial conflicts that were roiling their homeland thousands of miles away. Over seven years in the making, Fighting on Two Fronts draws on interviews with dozens of Vietnam veterans - black and white - and official Pentagon documents to paint the first complete picture of the African American experience in Vietnam.