<![CDATA[Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point]]>

false <![CDATA[Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point]]> 446326 3 Elizabeth D. Samet and her students learned to romanticize the army “from the stories of their fathers and from the movies.” For Samet, it was the old World War II movies she used to watch on TV, while her students grew up on Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Unlike their teacher, however, these students, cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, have decided to turn make-believe into real life. West Point is a world away from Yale, where Samet attended graduate school and where nothing sufficiently prepared her for teaching literature to young men and women who were training to fight a war. Intimate and poignant, Soldier’s Heart chronicles the various tensions inherent in that life as well as the ways in which war has transformed Samet’s relationship to literature. Fighting in Iraq, Samet’s former students share what books and movies mean to them—the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the fiction of Virginia Woolf and J. M. Coetzee, the epics of Homer, or the films of James Cagney. Their letters in turn prompt Samet to wonder exactly what she owes to cadets in the classroom. Samet arrived at West Point before September 11, 2001, and has seen the academy change dramatically. In Soldier’s Heart, she reads this transformation through her own experiences and those of her students. Forcefully examining what it means to be a civilian teaching literature at a military academy, Samet also considers the role of women in the army, the dangerous tides of religious and political zeal roiling the country, the uses of the call to patriotism, and the cult of sacrifice she believes is currently paralyzing national debate. Ultimately, Samet offers an honest and original reflection on the relationship between art and life. 1412027 16 10 2007 Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point total:151|5:35|4:57|3:41|2:13|1:5| 151 557 289 52 4 2 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Dec 28 10:09:23 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 22 08:56:46 -0800 2009
Well, I now suggest that more of us need to rea...more...]]> 3 1 false false Thu Jul 24 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 29 08:40:14 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 29 18:41:24 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Nov 26 06:34:43 -0800 2007 Sat Dec 01 12:02:32 -0800 2007 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Tue Dec 11 18:02:18 -0800 2007 Tue Dec 11 18:06:27 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Dec 10 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 10 19:07:49 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 10 19:17:37 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue May 19 19:05:12 -0700 2009 Tue May 19 19:19:56 -0700 2009 more...]]> 0 0 false false Thu Feb 05 09:53:59 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 09:53:59 -0800 2009 "What's the difference, ma'am? I'll be in Iraq within a year anyway," contends a cadet in Elizabeth Samet's English class. Soldier's Heart responds by making a graceful, compelling case that reading forces her students to slow down and reflect on such timeless themes as courage, honor, and...

more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Nov 21 14:15:48 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 01 16:42:47 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Apr 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 17 08:34:39 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 17 08:41:01 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jan 15 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jun 30 11:45:36 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 30 11:52:57 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Feb 12 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 03 08:39:36 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 12 12:29:32 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Jun 14 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 23 06:18:57 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 14 12:26:25 -0700 2009 Weekend Edition or All Things Considered that introduced me to Elizabeth Samet, literature professor at West Point. Either way, I kept her book, Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point, on my reading list a good long time before picking it up.
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More than that though, I feel like I am coming away from reading this bo...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Mar 27 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 14:39:29 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 29 14:41:18 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Jun 27 07:32:06 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 27 07:38:06 -0700 2008
Samet does not provide a linear narrative so we don't get a sense of how she changed. I ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 17 13:17:40 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 13:17:40 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Jul 31 08:09:10 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 31 08:11:35 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jun 06 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Mar 30 11:45:31 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 06 19:21:42 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Nov 17 08:25:29 -0800 2007 Thu Nov 22 10:13:27 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed May 28 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue May 27 15:51:00 -0700 2008 Thu May 29 16:58:43 -0700 2008
Once again I have retreated--or advanced--to literature perhaps because I'm more comfortable analyzi...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=446326