Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families
About this audiobook
In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts organized a series of writing workshops led by prominent authors to encourage US troops and their families to record their experiences and reflections on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The result is this extraordinary volume of first-hand letters, poems, journals, memoirs, and e-mails from the men and women directly involved in battle and their families back home.
This uniquely personal addition to the long tradition of war literature covers the entire arc of a soldier’s journey, from those first experiences of combat, encounters with Iraqis and Afghans, and the humor and boredom of the daily grind, to the physical and emotional toll of battle, the struggle of loved ones back home to carry on, and finally the return and integration back into American life.
About the author
Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.
Joe Barrett began his acting career at the age of five in the basement of his family's home in upstate New York. He has gone on to play many stage roles, both on and off-Broadway, and in regional theaters from Los Angeles, Houston, and St. Louis to Washington DC, San Francisco, and Portland, Maine. He has appeared in films and television, both prime time and late night, and in hundreds of television and radio commercials. Joe has narrated over two hundred audiobooks. He has been an Audie Award finalist eight times, and his narration of Gun Church by Reed Farrel Coleman won the 2013 Audie Award for Original Work. AudioFile magazine has granted Joe fourteen Earphones Awards, including for James Salter's All That Is and Donald Katz's Home Fires. Regarding Joe's narration of John Irving's A Prayer For Owen Meany, AudioFile said, "This moving book comes across like a concerto... with a soloist-Owen's voice-rising from the background of an orchestral narration." Joe is married to actor Andrea Wright, and together they have four very grown children.
David Birney is an American actor and director whose career performances include both contemporary and classical roles in theater, film and television. He has recorded numerous audiobook bestsellers, including works by Dean Koontz, Paul Theroux, Annie Dillard, Thomas Kenneally, and Orson Scott Card. His reading of Julie Salomon’s The Christmas Tree was honored with the prestigious Audie Award and has also been the recipient of several AudioFile Earphone Awards.
Richard Brewer, a native Californian, has always been a lover of stories and storytelling. He has worked as a writer, actor, bookseller, story editor, book reviewer, audiobook narrator, and movie and television development executive. He is coeditor of the critically acclaimed Bruce Springsteen-inspired short story anthology Meeting Across the River.
Scott Brick first began narrating audiobooks in 2000, and after recording almost 400 titles in five years, AudioFile magazine named Brick a Golden Voice and “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy.” He has read a number of titles in Frank Herbert’s bestselling Dune series, and he won the 2003 Science Fiction Audie Award for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. Brick has narrated for many popular authors, including Michael Pollan, Joseph Finder, Tom Clancy, and Ayn Rand. He has also won over 40 AudioFile Earphones Awards and the AudioFile award for Best Voice in Mystery and Suspense 2011. In 2007, Brick was named Publishers Weekly’s Narrator of the Year. Brick has performed on film, television and radio. He appeared on stage throughout the United States in productions of Cyrano, Hamlet, Macbeth and other plays. In addition to his acting work, Brick choreographs fight sequences, and was a combatant in films including Romeo and Juliet, The Fantasticks and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. He has also been hired by Morgan Freeman to write the screenplay adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama.
Emily Janice Card has read a number of audiobooks, including Ben Bova's The Aftermath, Orson Scott Card's Ender in Exile, Lisa Gardner's The Neighbor, and several titles by Kimberly Willis Holt. Card is an actor, singer, and writer from North Carolina. On screen, she's appeared in The Delivery. Her stage work includes The Importance of Being Earnest, Bye Bye Birdie, The Fantasticks, and Once Upon a Mattress. She also adapted and starred in the play A Sepulcher of Songs, based on a short story by her father, Orson Scott Card.
Orson Scott Card is best known for his science fiction novel Ender's Game and its many sequels that expand the Ender Universe into the far future and the near past. Those books are organized into the Ender Saga, which chronicles the life of Ender Wiggin; the Shadow Series, which follows on the novel Ender's Shadow and is set on Earth; and the Formic Wars series, written with co-author Aaron Johnston, which tells of the terrible first contact between humans and the alien "Buggers." Card has been a working writer since the 1970s. Beginning with dozens of plays and musical comedies produced in the 1960s and 70s, Card's first published fiction appeared in 1977--the short story "Gert Fram" in the July issue of The Ensign, and the novelette version of "Ender's Game" in the August issue of Analog. The novel-length version of Ender's Game, published in 1984 and continuously in print since then, became the basis of the 2013 film, starring Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Steinfeld, Viola Davis, and Abigail Breslin. Card was born in Washington state, and grew up in California, Arizona, and Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s. Besides his writing, he runs occasional writers' workshops and directs plays. He frequently teaches writing and literature courses at Southern Virginia University. He is the author many science fiction and fantasy novels, including the American frontier fantasy series "The Tales of Alvin Maker" (beginning with Seventh Son), and stand-alone novels like Pastwatch and Hart's Hope. He has collaborated with his daughter Emily Card on a manga series, Laddertop. He has also written contemporary thrillers like Empire and historical novels like the monumental Saints and the religious novels Sarah and Rachel and Leah. Card's work also includes the Mithermages books (Lost Gate, Gate Thief), contemporary magical fantasy for readers both young and old. Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife, Kristine Allen Card. He and Kristine are the parents of five children and several grandchildren.
Gabrielle de Cuir is a Grammy-nominated and Audie Award-winning producer whose narration credits include the voice of Valentine in Orson Scott Card’s Ender novels, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan, and Natalie Angier’s Woman, for which she was awarded AudioFile magazine’s Golden Earphones Award. She lives in Los Angeles where she also directs theatre and presently has several projects in various stages of development for film.
Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) wrote and edited more than 120 books and more than 1,700 stories, essays, and articles, as well as dozens of screenplays and teleplays. He won the Hugo award nine times, the Nebula award three times, the Bram Stoker award six times (including the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Méliès Fantasy Film Award twice, and was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by PEN, the international writer’s union. He was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2006.
Robert Forster has appeared in a wide spectrum of roles in television, theater, and film over the past four decades. He received an Academy Award® nomination for his portrayal of Max Cherry in Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown, based on Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch; and starred in the television series Karen Sisco, based on characters created by Leonard.
Kirby Heyborne has received critical acclaim for his starring role in the award-winning World War II drama Saints and Soldiers. He has had starring roles in eight other features and two short films and has also appeared on the WB's Everwood and many national commercials. He has garnered rave reviews for his narration over the years and is considered one of the finest narrators working today.
Stephen Hoye has worked as a professional actor in London and Los Angeles for more than thirty years. Trained at Boston University and the Guildhall in London, he has acted in television series and six feature films and has appeared in London’s West End. His audiobook narration has won him fifteen AudioFile Earphones Awards.
Arte Johnson is an award-winning narrator and an American comic actor who won an Emmy Award for his role in the television series Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. His audiobook narations have won two AudioFile Earphones Awards, and he placed as a finalist for the Audie Award for best narration in 2003 and 2007.
Stephen Lang's Broadway work includes Wait Until Dark, A Few Good Men, The Speed of Darkness and Death of a Salesman. His films include Last Exit to Brooklyn, Gettysburg, Gods and Generals, and Tombstone. He is the Co-Artistic Director of the Actors Studio.
Rex Linn, a winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2014, is an American film and television actor best known for his role as Frank Tripp in the television series CSI: Miami. Besides numerous other television roles, he has had roles in Django Unchained, Trial by Fire, and other major films. He was born and raised in the Texas panhandle and earned a BA in radio, television, and film from Oklahoma State University.
Kathe Mazur has narrated many audiobooks, winning the prestigious Audie Award for best narration in 2014, being named a finalist for the Audie Award in 2013 and 2015, and winning several AudioFile Earphones Awards. As an actress, she can be seen as DDA Hobbs on The Closer and in the upcoming Major Crimes. She has worked extensively in film, theater, and television, including appearances on Grey’s Anatomy, Private Practice, House, Brothers and Sisters, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior, ER, Monk, and many others.
Kevin Baker is the author of one previous novel, Sometimes You See It Coming, and served as chief historical researcher for the recently published The American Century by Harold Evans. He is married and lives in New York City.John Rubenstein won a Theater World Award, a Tony, and a Drama Desk Award for his performances in Pippin and Children of a Lesser God.
Mirron Willis has narrated over 200 audiobooks across various literary genres and has won several Earphone Awards for Excellence and is an Audie Award finalist and winner. Notable works include Ginny Gall by Charlie Smith, The Smokey Dalton Series by Kris Nelscott; My Song: A Memoir by Harry Belafonte; The Long Fall (Booklist, Best of 2009) and others by Walter Mosley; Uncle Tom's Cabin, Elijah of Buxton, The Translator; and Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B Dubois. In three seasons at the Ensemble Theatre (Houston, Texas), Mirron appeared as JP in What I Learned in Paris, Malcolm X in The Meeting, Henry in Race, and as Countee Cullen in Knock Me a Kiss (2013 Giorgee Award for Best Leading Actor). Other roles include Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Henry VI Parts 2 & 3, and A Raisin in the Sun with the world-renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He has also performed as guest narrator with the Houston Symphony. Film and TV guest appearances include Criminal Minds, Private Practice, The Exes, Monk, 24, Seinfeld, Cheers, The Parkers, Living Single, E.R., Star Trek, and Independence Day, among others. Mirron resides and records audiobooks on his family's historic ranch in East Texas.
Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (1918–2014) was born in New York City and trained at the Yale School of Drama. An actor on stage, film, and television, he was also a narrator, voice-over artist, director, and award-winning producer. He is best remembered for his role as investigators on the TV shows 77 Sunset Strip and The FBI.
