Jarhead is some kind of classic...Swofford writes with humor, anger, and great skill. His prose is alive with ideas and feeling and at times soars like poetry. He captures the hilarity, tedium, horniness, and loneliness of the,long prewar desert deployment, and then powerfully records the experience of war...Jarhead is a coming-of-age story, an account of a wild passage familiar to millions of young men but rarely so well revealed.

 New York Times bestselling author Anthony Swofford weaves his experiences in war with vivid accounts of boot camp, reflections on the mythos of the marines, and remembrances of battles with lovers and family.

When the U.S. Marines or "jarheads"--were sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 for the first Gulf War, Anthony Swofford was there. He lived in sand for six months, he was punished by boredom and fear, he considered suicide, pulled a gun on a fellow marine, and was targeted by both enemy and friendly fire. And as engagement with the Iraqis drew near, he was forced to consider what it means to be an American, a soldier, a son of a soldier, and a man.