Where men win glory - Jon Krakauer

The bestselling author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, and Under the Banner of Heaven delivers a stunning, eloquent account of a remarkable young man's haunting journey.

Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers,
Pat Tillman was an irrepressible individualist and iconoclast. In May 2002, Tillman
walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in the United States Army.
He was deeply troubled by 9/11, and he felt a strong moral obligation to join the
fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Two years later, he died on a desolate hillside
in southeastern Afghanistan.


Though obvious to most of the two dozen soldiers
on the scene that a ranger in Tillman's own platoon had fired the fatal shots, the
Army aggressively maneuvered to keep this information from Tillman's wife, other
family members, and the American public for five weeks following his death. During
this time, President Bush repeatedly invoked Tillman's name to promote his administration' s foreign policy. Long after Tillman's nationally televised memorial service, the
Army grudgingly notified his closest relatives that he had "probably" been killed
by friendly fire while it continued to dissemble about the details of his death and
who was responsible.

In Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer draws on Tillman's journals
and letters, interviews with his wife and friends, conversations with the soldiers
who served alongside him, and extensive research on the ground in Afghanistan to
render an intricate mosaic of this driven, complex, and uncommonly compelling figure
as well as the definitive account of the events and actions that led to his death.
Before he enlisted in the army, Tillman was familiar to sports aficionados as an
undersized, overachieving Arizona Cardinals safety whose virtuosity in the defensive
backfield was spellbinding. With his shoulder-length hair, outspoken views, and boundless
intellectual curiosity, Tillman was considered a maverick. America was fascinated
when he traded the bright lights and riches of the NFL for boot camp and a buzz cut.
Sent first to Iraq-a war he would openly declare was "illegal as hell" -and eventually
to Afghanistan, Tillman was driven by complicated, emotionally charged, sometimes
contradictory notions of duty, honor, justice, patriotism, and masculine pride, and
he was determined to serve his entire three-year commitment. But on April 22, 2004,
his life would end in a barrage of bullets fired by his fellow soldiers.


Krakauer
chronicles Tillman's riveting, tragic odyssey in engrossing detail highlighting his
remarkable character and personality while closely examining the murky, heartbreaking
circumstances of his death. Infused with the power and authenticity readers have
come to expect from Krakauer's storytelling, Where Men Win Glory exposes shattering
truths about men and war.