Here are stunningly honest first-hand accounts and personal reflections by U.S. troops and their families.

To encourage U.S. troops and their families to record what they saw, heard, and felt during combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, the National Endowment for the Arts organized a series of writing workshops in the summer of 2004 led by prominent authors. The result is this extraordinary volume of never-before-published letters, poems, journals, memoirs, and e-mails, first-hand accounts from the men and women directly involved in battle and the reflections of their families back home.

As featured on the cover of theNew Yorker and in various print and televised news programs, this is not only a rich historical document that will preserve the stories and reflections of American troops in the war on terror but also an important addition to the long tradition of war literature at a crucial moment in American history.

Andrew Carroll’s books, War Letters and Letters of a Nation, were New York Times bestsellers. In 1998, he founded the Legacy Project, a national, allvolunteer effort to honor and remember our nation’s veterans by seeking out and saving their letters. He is editing this book on a pro bono basis. Carroll lives in Washington D.C.