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"The story of Army Major General Mark Graham and his wife Carol, whose two sons are both military men. Their sons pass (one from suicide, one in combat), and the Grahams' grief sheds light on military culture, and society's struggle to come to terms with the death of our soldiers"-- "The unforgettable and sensitively reported story of a military family that lost two sons--one to suicide and one in combat--and channeled their grief into fighting the armed forces' suicide epidemic. Major General Mark Graham is a decorated two-star officer whose integrity and patriotism inspires his sons, Jeff and Kevin, to pursue military careers of their own. When Kevin and Jeff die within nine months of one another--Kevin commits suicide and Jeff is killed by an IED in Iraq--Mark and his wife Carol are astonished by the drastically different responses their sons' deaths receive from the Army. While Jeff is lauded as a hero, Kevin's death is met with silence, evidence of the terrible stigma that surrounds suicide in the military. Convinced that their sons died fighting different battles, Mark and Carol commit themselves to changing the institution that is the cornerstone of their lives. The Invisible Front is the story of a family's quest to make PTSD and mental illness in the Army more visible, but it is also a window into the military's institutional shortcomings and its resistance to change. As Mark ascends the military hierarchy and eventually takes command of Fort Carson, Colorado--a sprawling base with one of the highest suicide rates in the armed forces--the Grahams come into direct conflict with an entrenched military bureaucracy that considers mental health problems to be a display of weakness and that has refused to acknowledge the severity of its suicide problem. Yochi Dreazen, an award-winning journalist who has covered the military since 1999, has been granted remarkable access to the Graham family and tells their story in the full context of two of America's longest wars. Dreazen places Mark and Carol's personal journey, which begins with Mark's entry into the military and continues through his retirement thirty-four years later, against the backdrop of the military's suicide spike, investigating broader issues in military culture. With great sympathy and profound insight, The Invisible Front examines America's problematic treatment of its soldiers and offers the Graham family's work as a new way of understanding the human cost of war and its lingering effects off the battlefield"--… (more)
User reviews
Told with great sympathy and profound insight, the Invisible Front is the story of the wars lingering human cost, which remains long after the guns are silent.
Families, including the children of these military individuals, suffer their losses silently.
I highly recommend this book to all readers to fully understand that we should not be silent anymore. Wars kill!
The Invisible Front is engaging, heartbreaking, and brutally honest in its discussion of mental illness on both a personal level and at an institutional level. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in military history and mental health issues. It’s well written, frank, and honest about a problem many do not want to address.
This book is a difficult read, but an important one. In the era of endless war it behooves all of us to look long and hard at the results of the decision to deploy troops and to become educated on the issues surrounding suicide, PTSD, and traumatic brain injury. At the very least people need to have enough compassion not to tell the loved ones of those who die by suicide that they were just weak or that they're burning in hell.
The military has a long and painful history of ignoring and punishing soldiers with depression, PTSD, mental illness and those who commit suicide. What made this book particularly gripping was the way it told the story of one particular family's struggles with the military's pernicious and hostile culture towards soldiers with mental illness yet also fully examines the policies and systems that have kept this culture in place. This makes for a rich and thorough understanding of how the suicide rate in the military is higher than the military in civilian life. It also speaks to the bravery of the Graham family, especially Major General Graham's quest to change the culture of the military and stop the marginalization and stigmatization of those with mental illness. This book has the potential to be a game changer for the military and beyond.
I thank Blogging for Books for giving me the opportunity to review this book for an honest review
First, this is the story of an American military family who suffered the loss of 2 sons in the course of 9 months - one from suicide, the other from an IED in Iraq. If that isn't tragic enough, it's also the story of
It is the tragic story of the mental health crisis facing the military and society's failure to meet the needs of the soldiers who are crushed and changed by war. I think Americans owe it to the men and women who serve to know what's going on and reading this book is a good start.
This is an important topic and Yochi Dreazen is an engaging writer. I'll look for more of his books.