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5 Books To Keep Your Mind As Trained WOMEN'S

As Your Body
HELP

February 01, 2022 | 11 min read

As the self-appointed SOFLETE literary critic and grouchy librarian, I have

harangued you all to read David Joy and Larry Brown’s books on multiple
occasions. You should read David Joy because he’s actively working to keep
alive a style of literature I happen to enjoy, because he’s generous with advice
for a certain Marine and aspiring writer y’all may know, and because he
exempliVes the #DieLiving mantra pretty damn well. You should read Larry
Brown because he’s the author that exposed me to that style of literature I
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happen to enjoy a lot and he deVnitely #DiedLiving. Those remain standing
recommendations, but once you’ve exhausted that canon, what’s next?

Well, the good news is great writers are putting out great work every month.
The bad news is neither my brain nor my wallet can keep up. Regardless, I
decided to kick you some suggestions once in a while in what I hope the boys
at HQ will allow me to turn into a semi-recurrent e[ort. So here’s Vve books
you should read right now, why you ought to read them, and who will most like

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 them.

1. The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock

The Heavenly Table is the most wholly enjoyable book I’ve read by Donald Ray
Pollock, a guy who I sometimes think is daring me to keep reading just to see if
I have the stones for it. Pollock is the kind of writer I most admire; a regular
human with an amazing talent he had to Vght to share with the world. Pollock
was born in 1954 in Knockemsti[, Ohio, dropped out of high school, and
subsequently lived his entire life in Chillicothe, Ohio. Like Larry Brown working
as a full time Vreman, Pollock worked as a laborer and truck driver at a paper
mill for thirty-four years. He was Vfty when he enrolled at Ohio State University
in 2004, ultimately completing a Bachelor in English and a Master of Fine Arts.
In 2008, he wrote a short story collection calledKnockemsti4and then a novel
calledThe Devil All the Time. They are both relentless in their violence and the
varying levels of depravity and desperation of their characters. Frankly, at
times, I had to putThe Devil All the Time down and go Vnd some sunshine. But
there is art and a blood stained beauty in Pollock’s depiction of lawmen and
criminals, prostitutes and preachers, killers and martyrs. It’s like the remnants
of animal slaughter after a righteous hunt. It is messy and foul in some ways
but it will feed your family and make you stronger. Pollock understands the
essence of humanity at the visceral level of our instincts.

So why readThe Heavenly Table over his Vrst two works? Frankly, because it is
not as unrelentingly dark (though if unrelentingly dark is your thing, have at it).
To be sure, as in his previous works, there are all manner of debauched
humans. Set in 1917, as America prepares to enter The Great War, the main
characters are three brothers. Cane, the oldest, is the gang leader; Cob is the
middle brother, a basically kind brute who has some mental dihculties; and
Chimney, the youngest who is decidedly the most morally coniicted character.
When their father meets his end on their sharecropper farm “in that sliver of
border land that divides Georgia from Alabama”, they decide that a turn of the
century, Quentin Tarantino style, rampage is their best way to move up in the
world. Their travels, and travails, bring them into contact with a host of
interesting characters and shed light on both the complexity and banality of
the good and evil that make up mankind.

Who will like Donald Ray Pollock? Certainly Cormac McCarthy fans. If you liked

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 Blood Meridian or The Road you’re a member of the target audience. If you like
Coen Brother movies, or the aforementioned Quentin Tarantino, you’re in
there. I suspect that even if you’re of a more literary bent, a fan of writers like
Flannery O’Connor or Erskine Caldwell, this is for you. Regardless, this is the
real world, illuminated by its extremes. Read it…if you have the stones.

2. Red Platoon by Clint Romesha.

I have found no indications that Mr. Romesha had a ghost writer assist him
with this book, which is at least part of what makes this book so damned
compelling to me. That Mr. Romesha has enough mastery of the use of
language to craft what might be the best Vrst person, tactical level, narrative
I’ve ever read while also being the kind of soldier who performed at a level that
results in an award of the Medal of Honor is incredibly unique.Red Platoon is, to
my mind, the single best “there I was” book I have ever read. Then Sta[
Sergeant Romesha describes the battle of COP Keating, a tiny outpost in
Nuristan, that should probably never have been built. From a military
perspective, it was almost indefensible, literally and Vguratively. But in 2009,
population-centric Counterinsurgency theory (COIN) was still the iavor of the
day and COP Keating a[orded US forces a position from which to maintain
some connection with the local populace and hopefully interdict insurgent
movement in one of Afghanistan’s most remote provinces. Jake Tapper’sThe
Outpost, due out as a Vlm next year, covered the battle of COP Keating pretty

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 thoroughly butRed Platoono[ers an incredibly detailed account that will be by
turns sobering, depressing, and incredibly inspiring.

Eight soldiers died, two Medals of Honor were awarded, and aspects of
national policy came into question as a result of one fourteen-hour VreVght.
Romesha recounts it all with humility, honesty, and a genuinely lyrical ability to
use the language. He describes well the bonds and petty bickering that occur
amongst men under stress and in close quarters. He describes the bravery and
cowardice that are equally present under Vre, sometimes in the same man. His
combat descriptions are unrelenting and frankly, at times surprisingly graphic. I
think that’s important for America to read while I simultaneously worry about
the families of the fallen being exposed to the ugly reality of their loved one’s
last moments. Combat isn’t clean and the deaths that accompany it are ugly
and painful and often foul. Romesha gifts readers, and honors the fallen, with
that truth.

Anyone considering military service, especially combat arms service, should

readRed Platoon. Young service members, especially soldiers and Marines, will
get a lot from it. Company grade ohcers and sta[ non-commissioned ohcers
will get good insights into the men and women they lead. More senior ohcers
should read Red Platoon as a reminder of realities that may have faded in the
fullness of time. But more than that, average Americans should read this to
understand what has been asked of, and done in their name by
servicemembers since 2001.

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 3. Donnybrook by Frank Bill

This will be a weird thing to say in a book recommendation list: I didn’t love
Frank Bill’sDonnybrook. But I liked it enough to recommend it (and will read the
author’s other works) and I think it will quickly Vnd fans in the Die Living
community, especially with the February 2019 release of the Vlm based upon it.
I watched some YouTube interviews with Frank Bill. He likes to lift heavy, run
ultra-marathons, is inspired by the same authors as I, and listens to the same
bands I do. That was enough to grab my interest and convince me to
readDonnybrook; Bill’s comment on masculinity, poverty, and desperation in
parts of north Kentucky and south Indiana, a region he knows because he still
lives and works as a forklift operator there (again, shades of Pollock and
Brown). The characters in Donnybrook are consistently violent, profane, and
perverse. They know their backs are against the wall and their outlooks are
correspondingly bleak. One says,

“We got no jobs, no money, no power, no nothin', nothin' to live for 'cept vice
and indulgence. That's how they control us. But it's falling apart. What we got is
our land and our machines, our families and our ability to protect it all, to keep
them alive. We got our hands. Ones who'll survive will be the ones can live from

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 the land. Can wield a gun. Those folks'll Vght for what little they've got. They'll
surprise the criminals with their own savagery. Man, woman, and child will be
tested. Others'll be too weak and scared. Uneducated in common sense. Won't
know what's happened. But believe me, war is coming.”

The violence ofDonnybrook is uncompromising. That should probably be

expected in a novel about people en route to a three day long, bare knuckle,
survivor takes all Vght contest called “the Donnybrook” where rounds oftwenty
men pay $1000 to savagely beat each other until only one is left standing. On
the third day the individual winners Vght for a $100,000 purse.

The book is populated by characters fueled almost entirely by avarice, lust,

revenge, and methamphetamine. The two main characters are Chainsaw
Angus, a legendary brawler turned meth addict and dealer, so named because
he is permanently scarred after he took a chainsaw to the face, and Jarhead
Johnny Earl, a talented local Vghter with decency hiding beneath his desperate
need to take care of his wife and two children. The story moves fast. In way I
felt like I was clinging to a log in a rushing river, with scenes of sometimes
almost absurd levels of violence acting like the rocks in the river that a reader
bumps against, gets turned around a few times, and pushed o[ to the next
obstacle.

People looking for social commentary served with Chuck Palahniuk style
mayhem will like it. People who appreciate an artistic turn of a phrase will
appreciate Bill’s use of the language, though like Cormac McCarthy (who is
obviously a huge iniuence on Frank Bill), I sometimes found myself re-reading
a paragraph to make sure I understood who did what in order to leave a
character with a crushed larynx or on Vre. Donnybrook is so far out on the
edge of literary normalcy that even someone who is just here for the violence
will Vnd what they’re looking for. Give it a shot.

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 4. Fields of Fire by James Webb

James Webb exempliVes the Die Living ethos. Any one of his accomplishments
would suhce for most people; US Naval Academy and Georgetown Law
graduate, Marine Infantry Ohcer who commanded a company in Vietnam
receiving the Navy Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star, and Purple Heart in the
process, distinguished journalist and author, Secretary of the Navy, and a U.S.
Senator from Virginia to name just some.Fields of Fire is the Vrst book he wrote,
while recovering from injuries received in combat and attending law school. I
expect a lot of folks have already readFields of Fire, but in a way I hope not so I
can turn more people on to it. The book is about to experience it’s 40th
Anniversary and anyone interested in combat and the nature of men within it
will appreciate it. Though a novel vice a history, any student of the Vietnam War
should readFields of Fire.

Fields of Fire tells the tale of a Marine riie platoon in the An Hoa basin through
the eyes of its platoon commander, Lieutenant Robert E. Lee Hodges, a
Harvard dropout called “Senator” Goodrich, and a squad leader called “Snake”.
We know Snake’s Vrst name is Ronnie but never learn his full name. I think that
creates some of the psychological distance, driven by the individual personnel
replacement cycle, that characterized infantry combat in Vietnam. We know
Snake is the guy we need to follow to survive, but we don’t even know his full

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 name. Fields of Fire gets iak for not being as literary as his later works, but as a
twenty-four-year Marine, I say the brutal, simpler, perhaps more stripped-down
prose is perfect for the subject matter; a group of young men trying to survive
and do their duty in the particularly Vlthy and brutal existence o[ered by
infantry combat.

If you’ve readMatterhorn by Karl Marlantes, you’ll Vnd similarity because

Marlantes owes a debt to Webb. Another similar book isBody Count by William
Turner Huggett which actually precededFields of Fireby Vve years but gets a lot
less attention. Regardless, if you want a solid novel, it works. If you want to
understand platoon level combat in Vietnam, it works. If you want an
examination of the way war twists morality and forces people in directions they
never expected to go, it works. Like Red Platoon above, it is a good book for
anyone interested in serving in the infantry or anyone interested in history of
warfare. But ultimately, it works as a novel as well and that opens the audience
pretty dramatically. I read it annually from ninth grade till I commissioned. I
think it’s time to crack it open again.

5. On Desperate Ground: The Marines at the Reservoir, The Korean

War’s Greatest Battle by Hampton Sides

Simply put, this is the best military history I’ve read in a long time.On Desperate
Ground details events around the Chosin Reservoir from November 27 to

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 December 13 December, in which 30,000 United Nations troops, primarily
Marines of the 1st Marine Division, were encircled by 120,000Chinese with
orders to destroy them in detail. Commanded by Major General O.P Smith, UN
forces broke out of the trap and made a Vghting withdrawal to the port of
Hungnam, killing piles of Chinese troops along the way.

Sides chooses to describe events at all levels of war to give a comprehensive

understanding of the events. To me, it’s the book’s accessibility and readability
that makes this book particularly valuable given the breadth of things already
written about Chosin. He narrates the issues between nations as adeptly as he
describes hand to hand combat in the frozen hills around the reservoir. There
is enough of all kinds of writing to satisfy everyone from a serious student of
military history to someone looking for a “there I was” story for and airplane
ride. My only complaint is that I would have liked more Regimental Combat
Team 31, the US Army unit that fought on the east side of the reservoir. RCT 31
has been scapegoated by some historians, but subsequent investigation
reveals that the unit called Task Force Faith (after Lieutenant Colonel Don Faith
who took command and was subsequently killed in action, receiving the Medal
of Honor for his bravery) held o[ an enemy that vastly outnumbered them and
was a major contributor to the ability of the 1st Marine Division to break out.

If you are a student of history, fascinated by human endurance, or just looking

to learn something,On Dangerous Ground is a great read. It left me wanting to
read more about Maj Gen Smith because Sides’ characterization of him made
him fascinating to me. Any book that drives you to another is worth the time.

Reading is like doing deadlifts for your brain, it makes your intellectual core
stronger.Timothy Bates and Stuart Ritchie, researchers at Edinburgh University,
followed more than 17,000 people in England, Scotland and Wales over 50
years and empirically demonstrated that "Children with higher reading and
maths skills ended up having higher incomes, better housing and more
professional roles in adulthood." Reading is something you can do for you,
purely to serve your own purposes. Read and grow strong.

#DIELIVING

Russell Worth Parker is a career Marine Corps Special Operations OGcer. He likes

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 barely making the cut-o4s in ultra-marathon events, sport eating, and complaining
about losing the genetic lottery. He is an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran and graduate
of the University of Colorado, the Florida State University College of Law and the
Masters in ConPict Management and Resolution Program at the University of North
Carolina-Wilmington. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and
do not rePect the oGcial policy or position of the United States Special Operations
Command, the United States Marine Corps, the Department of the Navy, the
Department of Defense, or the United States Government.

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