God Forgives, Brothers Don't

""Jasper Craven demonstrates how our national cult of toxic masculinity was made, not born--at America's military service academies, from their gestation in 1802 in a country whose founders supposedly despised the idea of standing armies, all the way through a notorious military academy's role in shaping the dark heart of Donald J. Trump. And, unfortunately, beyond."" —Rick Perlstein, New York Times bestselling author of Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge “Jasper Craven has produced a fascinating and barbed look at military education and American notions of manhood from the founding to the present day. God Forgives, Brothers Don’t doesn’t simply decry the long-running conflation of strength and cruelty, it makes a sharp argument for what true strength actually looks like.” —Phil Klay, bestselling author of Redeployment ""Put Jasper Craven’s book on the shelf by John Steinbeck, Michael Herr and Sebastian Junger, the only civilians of the last century who’ve written as well or convincingly about the military. Craven is one of the few who can capture the foreign culture of the military without being captured by it."" —Matt Farwell, former Army infantryman and author of American Cipher: Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. Tragedy in Afghanistan   “A lucid and fluent examination of how militaristic educational institutions like West Point, the Citadel, Valley Forge, ROTC, JROTC, and even the Boy Scouts warp and distort the psyches of men and boys, stamping out truly manly qualities like optimism, warmth, amity, honesty, and independence of mind, to create for the benefit of an immoral government obedient legions of servile and emotionally stunted hollow men afflicted by anger, shame, loneliness, and despair.” —Seth Harp, NYT best-selling author of The Fort Bragg Cartel