No Man's Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America Hardcover – November 4, 2014

A very unique book. The author is a literature professor at West Point. Elizabeth Samet offers some very insightful gems of knowledge. She tells her story in a fascinating way through a mix of stories from her students, stories from movies and tales in books. This blend tells a story that both entertain and open up your eyes.

The book has two basic parts. Initially she does an excellent way of describing Veteran's readjustment to civilian life. Her way of describing what it feels like to come back from war really hits home. She does this through tales of about veterans joining motorcycle clubs and doing other extreme things. This gives civilians a good way to understand what it is like.

The second part is how she uses literature to prepare leaders for conflict. This is a real insightful way. It is a point I have never heard before. Stories from literature, and I would add history broaden our perspective. It gives us context about what is bad and what is good. We all in stress will reach a point where things don't make sense. Our old stories stop working. Our perspective hits a brick wall. Things don't make sense. The stories of Henry the V, Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, US Grant, and many others broadens our perspective. Our world we have grows, We now have the advantage of their world and understanding too. That in turn helps us better understand our self and help us gain a new vision of where we might go.

To many familiar with her work, Elizabeth Samet, a civilian, is arguably the most familiar (and articulate) 21st century voice of West Point. Her previous books, articles, and published interviews about her experience with military colleagues and graduates at the Perpendicular Gothic institution on the banks of the Hudson have been widely read. Her work, capturing distinctive views of the military establishment and those in it, has met with well-deserved critical acclaim.

Rapidly approaching her twentieth year as a member of the English Department faculty at West Point, the United States Military Academy, Professor Samet has written another book derived from her vast knowledge of Literature, her enduring affection for the thousands of cadets whom she has guided on voyages of intellectual discovery, and her increasing familiarity with the ways of the Army.

In her latest book she continues to write joyfully about her experiences, in and out of the classroom, and her long-lasting friendships and correspondence with former students and faculty colleagues – and real-life adventures with young West Pointers, both cadets and graduates, from the baseball field to the Alaskan wilderness.

But in the overall form of a meditation on a theme – or more accurately, many meditations on many themes, her most recent book, “No Man’s Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America,” is ultimately a lament, if not a cri de coeur – a lament that mourns the loss, in battle, of former students – and an outcry protesting characteristics of the Army that she has finally come to understand after prolonged exposure, and find troublesome, if not disheartening: the institutional belief in “fool-proof” sets of instructions rather than creative problem-solving, garrison life “chicken-shit” that can demoralize the most dedicated warfighter, and the emergence of a vast cultural divide between senior officers and their juniors, whom they regard as undisciplined “cowboys,” ignorant of established standards and procedures, typically leading to an accelerating profusion of the aforementioned poultry scat and the loss of some of the best and brightest young officers within ten years of graduation.

Although the book covers a great deal of ground and cites hundreds of reference texts, from Homer to Moltke via Shakespeare, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Herman Melville, the dominant, underlying themes of the book are rather well defined by two works: “Duty,” a memoir by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and “Catch-22,” a dark, absurdist, work by Joseph Heller, based on his fictionalized vision of death in a B-25 bomber over Italy during WWII.

Samet, like Gates, believes that military officers at all levels need the ability to creatively cope with the analysis and resolution of complex problems in uncertain circumstances – and that time spent in specialized training and assignments outside of a “typical” career path should be recognized, valued, and rewarded. Samet sincerely believes that the study of literature is one way to accomplish such ability to confront ambiguity, and that opinion is supported by numerous letters from graduates who credit her classes with giving them the ability to overcome the uncertainties of life and the fog of war.

Like Gates, Samet sadly opines that the Army is reluctant to change, and cites “an increasing dissatisfaction with old blueprints” in attempting to understand the changing nature of armed conflict, the profession of arms and the role of the military in furthering national objectives.

The book is dedicated In Memoriam to two of Professor Samet’s former students, both killed in action in Afghanistan in 2010. It ends with a Coda, in which she uses a rather extensive discussion of “Catch-22” to trace her growing understanding of Heller’s book over time, and how it reflects her reaction to the death in combat of two former students who had become close friends.

In the last 20 pages of the book Samet recounts how, reading the book after only one semester at West Point, essentially during peacetime, she saw it as a comic novel, “the funniest, most outrageous thing I’ve ever read.” The cumulative effect of the ensuing and ongoing war years has made her more conscious of the underlying tragedy of the novel: the death, in the frigid air over Italy, of an eviscerated crewman. She writes, “Snowden dies, and there’s nothing Yossarian can do about it. That is the source of the outrage, the extremity, the thing against which the spectator is powerless—against which I’m powerless.”

This admission of powerlessness—not yet exhaustion—is the most significant self-revelation in the book. Professor Samet is deeply saddened by the death in war of her young friends. But the sadness is painfully exacerbated by her inability, as a teacher, to help her students, past, present, or to come, to avoid that perhaps inevitable fate.

Very good information up front on how to understand the issues of returning home for Veterans and their families. More 'literature' than some folks might enjoy but the book gets back to some practical material again towards the end. I bought extra to give away.

Great literary insight into the feelings of soon to be and have become modern day warriors. Compelling reading. She has greatly enhanced the value of a "military " education and what it means.

This essay, while beautiful in conception, suffers from some pretty unoriginal thinking regarding education and military training in general. There is a ten to fifteen page stretch where Dr. Samet uses historical examples to criticize preparedness, and then goes on to disparage the notion of relevance in education and training. To claim that the military is too focused on preparedness and relevance, and suggest that teachers and trainers should not have to address those issues, serves to mischaracterize some of the more urgent challenges facing young leaders (and senior leaders) in the armed forces today (and always). This passage and others decrying the lack of "strategic thinking and ability" are just too misconceived for such a thoughtful author.
That being said, this book like Soldier's Heart, is full of interesting and sometimes beautiful anecdotes of Dr. Samet's interactions with cadets and officers over the years, and the author remains a great guide to very good books. Make sure you read Soldier's Heart first.