In early summer of 1990, Joel Turnipseed was homeless--kicked out of his
college's philosophy program, dumped by his girlfriend. He had been AWOL
from his Marine Corps Reserve unit for more than three months, spending
his days hanging out in coffee shops reading Plato and Thoreau.
Then Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
Turnipseed's unit was activated for service in Operation Desert Shield.
By January of '91, he was in Saudi Arabia driving tractor-trailers for
the Sixth Motor Transport Battalion--the legendary "Baghdad Express."
The greatest logistical operation in Marine Corps history, the Baghdad
Express hauled truckloads of explosives and ammunition across hundreds
of miles of desert. But on the brink of war, Turnipseed's greatest
struggles are still within. Armed with an M-16 and a seabag full of
philosophy books, he is a wise-ass misfit, an ironic observer with a
keen eye for vivid detail, a rebellious Marine alive to the moral
ambiguity of his life and his situation.
Developed from Turnipseed's 1997 feature article for GQ Magazine, this
innovative memoir--simultaneously terrifying and hilarious, equal parts
Catch-22 and Catcher in the Rye--explores both the absurdities of war
and the necessity of accepting our flawed world of shadows. With
expansive humanity and profane grace, Turnipseed finds the real-world
answers to his philosophical questions and reaches the hardest peace for
any young man to achieve--with himself.
