'Breaking Ranks:' Personal Perspectives on War

August 24, 2010

A new book co-authored by Brown anthropology professors Matthew Gutmann and Catherine Lutz brings a deeply personal perspective to the war in Iraq by looking into the lives of six veterans who turned against the war they helped to fight.

Breaking Ranks: Iraq Veterans Speak Out against the War (University of California Press, August 2010) is based on extensive interviews with each of the six. 

Their journeys to Iraq began with the sincere desire to do good, the authors write. “This is a book about discovery and how young soldiers and Marines came to change their minds about the war and develop a different kind of conviction about how things should be. From a range of perspectives, and in complex, often contradictory ways, the six people here share the torment and belief that emerged from their experience and share insightful lessons from their recruitment, training, deployment, and return home.”

Gutmann is also Brown’s vice president of international affairs and Lutz is a professor of international studies at the Watson Institute.