Book Review: The Daughters of Kobani
I had the pleasure of meeting Gayle Tzemach-Lemmon many years ago while she was researching one of her previous novels. If you enjoy stories of unexpected heroes, I highly recommend all of her b...
Read moreBook Review: Kitchen Confidential - A Review Aged 21 Years
The year was 2021, and I was on my way to Budapest. I was already a seasoned traveler and a hungry writer. I had published my first book and had a few articles in circulation, which was good enou...
Read moreBook Review: The First Marauder - A Post-Apocalyptic Look Into Human Nature
At Hartsfield Jackson International Airport on a Tuesday afternoon I breezed through security and already secured my preflight coffee and bagel, I decided to do my favorite thing, people watch. ...
Read moreBook Review: The Hill by Aaron Kirk
Imagine you’re twenty-one years old again. You’re in charge of a small squad of US Marines who occupy a strategic outpost in Afghanistan nicknamed The Hill. Troops from the Soviet Union, the Briti...
Read moreBook Review: The Accursed Huntsman
“A terrifyingly familiar feeling strummed furiously against the frayed strings of Jack’s psyche. Deep in the repressed recesses of his mind, the slope-backed shadows from that hellish mountain m...
Read moreBy Cokie “Joe Watts had either lived everywhere, lived more than once, or had the worst memory of any truth-bender in the history of the Army. He was not just a story-teller, but a godless, wild...
Read moreBook Review: The Unwomanly Face of War
“I heard…words…poison…words like stones…It was men’s desire---to go and fight. Can a woman kill?! Those were abnormal, defective women… No! A thousand times no! No, it was a human desir...
Read moreA good friend of mine, Douglass Hoover, recently wrote his debut novel, The Homestead, and reached out to me to get my opinion on the book. Since I’m in grad school, I don’t typically find time ...
Read moreMy decision to join the service right out of high school probably had as much to do with Teddy Roosevelt as it did the Marine Corps recruiter. As a kid, I read TR’s “Man in the Arena ”speech and ...
Read moreLeo Jenkins has done it again. Jenkins, a former Army Ranger medic turned writer/poet/artist, has authored and co-authored several books of both prose and poetry, the themes of which include war, ...
Read moreForever War is Kate Gaskin’s first published poetry compilation and the winner of the 2018 Pamet River Prize. While this is Kate’s first book, her poems have been published in numerous literary jou...
Read moreWhere They Meet is a brilliant collection of poems by one of OAF’s own—the hard hitting, word slinging Cokie Actual. The duality I got from this read is striking. It’s hard to picture a former Sco...
Read moreI can’t help but wonder how many reviews of War and Peace there are. Given the book’s popularity, there are probably more takes on this mammoth tome than there are characters inside of it—which, co...
Read moreBook Review: All the Shah’s Men
In light of recent events, and the constant evolution of US-Iranian tensions, understanding their origins should be a priority for military leaders and critical thinkers. In a chaotic era of poor, ...
Read moreBook Review: The War Makes Everyone Lonely
Many in our (relatively) small veteran community may be wondering at the sudden upsurge of poetry in our midst. Great names familiar to us tour the country reading their works, names like David Ros...
Read more