Books for Warriors

Reading is a powerful way to develop your mind and prepare yourself for the future. Here’s some great resources…


Looking for God within the Kingdom of Religious Confusion
by A. W. Schade

A layman’s odyssey every ‘open-minded’ Atheist, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Agnostic or Spiritual seeker must read!
[Semi-NonFiction] Scriptural realities illuminate this mythical journey to discover the truth about God

“Devastated by his young daughter’s tragic death, Jacob is determined to find God to ask Him why He allowed her tragedy to occur. No longer sure where to find Him, or if God truly exists, Jacob travels through the ‘Ancient Gates of Abraham’ to wander across the contradictory and prejudiced roads within the Kingdom of Religious Confusion.

Repeatedly challenged to remain open-minded he engages religious leaders, devout followers, agnostics and atheists along passages as ‘Born again Street’, ‘Fundamentalist Drive’, ‘Junction of the Majority’, ‘Path of Disbelief’, and many more, in commonsense conversations to understand why their philosophy alone will lead him to God, or prove God’s non-existence.

Yet the further he travels the more confused he becomes, and it is not until his arduous journey nears its end that he recognizes a culminating revelation – insight he was not expecting to unearth.”

Veterans and their families can download a free electronic copy by clicking here.

If you have read this book, the author (awschade@gmail.com) would like to hear from you.


Poems in the Keys of Life: Reflections of a Combat Medic by Kerry “Doc” Pardue

I am one of several 1000’s of medics who served in the Republic of South Vietnam. Each of us has a story to tell….this one is mine. This is a story of my experiences of being a combat medic in Vietnam and after I came home learning how to deal with the effects of war. It is my desire that you will view all the pages contained here as they also pay honor to those I served and worked with.

This is a well rounded collection. These are poems that speak to the reader in the language of every day and at the same time embrace profundity. Their subject matter, the struggle of a just war, comradeship and loss, has never been more topical than it is now, with our troops once again defending freedom in a distant, hostile land. These poems are a reflective journey to find healing after the War in Vietnam. 35 years ago I was a combat medic. When I came home I was determined to put Vietnam behind me. Somehow, deep within my heart, soul, and spirit Vietnam was a part of who and what I became. Finally, my journey to healing began and these poems are the result of that journey 35 years later. These are a collection of poems about recovering from war and the effects of PTSD. They will make you cry, laugh, and appreciate friendships.

Doc Pardue

Rice Paddy Stew and Saigon Tea


Ghost Nation – Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Society by Ron and Helen Breland

Ghost Nation is a portrait of the American soldier returning home from war in this, a dual-front war within the global war on terrorism. Told with brutal honesty from a soldier on the ground, as well as a hardened army wife, Ghost Nation offers a perspective typically not open to the public. Both Helen and Ron Breland offer a glimpse into their life during and after post-traumatic stress disorder. This was written in the hope that it may help the nation of other families going through these trying circumstances find comfort that they are not alone, and that there is always hope.


Old GI’s and Sleeping Dragons by Doug Francescon

For years I wondered why my life was such a disaster following my Vietnam tour with the 1st Marine Division in 1967. Meaningful relationships were impossible. Friends and family who had been such a huge part of my life before the war meant little or nothing when I returned. Before Vietnam I’d never been in serious trouble. After my tour I was arrested multiple times for assault and disorderly conduct.

During those years I felt empty, detached and depressed to a degree that nearly ruined my life. The survivor guilt and inability to cope made each day a huge challenge. I asked over and over. “What’s wrong with me? Where did I fail”?

It took me years to understand that all this anguish was perfectly natural. I could only recover when I began to recognize how the changes caused by my combat experience turned me into an entirely different person, one who must start over to build a life that was worth living.

In this book I give examples of the things that caused the changes in me, and my reaction to them. It is not a war story. It’s a description of my long journey back from the killing fields, the kind of journey every combat vet must take so that he or she doesn’t waste the life that so many of their Brothers and Sisters will never know.

Make the journey my Brothers and Sisters. Find the love, understanding and peace that makes life worth living.

I love you Guys.

Doug

Contact: gisanddragons@yahoo.com


Victor Montgomery III, MAEd., CMAC, RAS

Healing Suicidal Veterans

HEALING SUICIDAL VETERANS: Recognizing, Supporting and Answering their Pleas for Help (October 2009, New Horizon Press) by Victor Montgomery III, MAEd., CMAC, RAS, is a must-read for any veteran struggling with anguish, suffering and depression. Montgomery shows there is hope, there is a future and there is help. Suicide is not the answer and this emphatic and informative book will give productive advice and resources for veterans and their loved ones in need.


Monty Roberts

Man Who Listens to Horses

Man Who Listens to Horses: The Story of a Real-Life Horse Whisperer (December 2008, Random House Publishing Group) by Monty Roberts.Monty Roberts is a real-life horse whisperer–an American original whose gentle Join-Up® training method reveals the depth of communication possible between man and animal. He can take a wild, high-strung horse who has never before been handled and persuade that horse to accept a bridle, saddle, and rider in thirty minutes. His powers may seem like magic, but his amazing “horse sense” is based on a lifetime of experience. In The Man Who Listens to Horses, Roberts reveals his unforgettable personal story and his exceptional insight into nonverbal communication, an understanding that applies to human relationships as well. He shows that between parent and child, employee and employer, abuser and abused, there are forms of communication far stronger than the spoken word that are accessible to all who will learn to listen. This new edition features engaging photographs, a chapter that traces Roberts’s amazing experience gentling with a mustang in the wild, and an Afterword about the remarkable impact this book has had on the world.

Horse Sense for People

Horse Sense for People: The Man Who Listens to Horses Talks to People (May 2002, Penguin Group (USA)) by Monty Roberts. This is Monty Roberts’s long-awaited sequel to The Man Who Listens to Horses. In this fascinating book, Monty Roberts shows us how to use the “Join-Up” technique-his amazing method for persuading a wild horse to accept a saddle, bridle, and rider-as the model for how best to strengthen human relationships. Full of memorable encounters with horses and humans, Horse Sense for People has at its core a belief in the power of gentleness, positive action, nonviolence, and trust. Roberts provides thought-provoking guidelines for improving the quality of our communication with one another, for learning to “read” each other effectively, and for creating fear-free environments. With demonstrations of the Join-Up technique selling out arenas all over the world, Monty Roberts continues to inspire enthusiasts and convert skeptics. Sure to draw many new readers, Horse Sense for People is the book Monty Roberts’s fans-be they horse enthusiasts, business managers, or book lovers-have been waiting for.

“I’m no horseman, but I know miracles when they happen. I’ve watched this magician of nonviolence change the wild rearing beasts into gentle horses under their riders, time and again, in minutes. Here he hands us some powerful lessons about healing and gentling ourselves and our relationships.” (Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull)


Lt. Col Dave Grossman: Killology

On Killing

On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Revised edition June 22, 2009, Back Bay Books) by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman. An eye-opening psychological study of killing in wartime–why soldiers must be trained to kill, how killing affects them, and what the military experience with killing means for society at large. Drawing on dozens of interviews, first-person reports and studies of combat soldiers, Grossman shows that almost all humans have an innate aversion to killing.

On Combat

On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace (September 2004, PPCT Research Publications) by Dave Grossman, Loren W. Christensen. “This new book is what our young warriors need. At one of David’s last briefings a Senior NCO approached me and said, “Sir, the army spent 18 years and thousands of dollars teaching me to kill. This is the first time I have been taught how to deal with it.” This book will allow those not fortunate enough to hear David do their own preparation for the ultimate test.” Lt. Col. Hal McNair Professor at the Joint Spec Ops University

Warrior Mindset

Warrior Mindset: Mental Toughness Skills for a Nation’s Peacekeepers (January 1, 2010, Human Factor Research Group) by Michael J. Asken, Dave Grossman, Loren W. Christensen. (Foreward by bestselling author Brad Thor). Warrior Mindset presents psychological techniques and training to develop Mental Toughness, a Survival Mindset, and a Hardened Focus. In an easy-to-read format, you will learn simple techniques to integrate psychological skills with physical and tactical training to add a dimension that is often overlooked, but necessary to achieve maximal performance excellence as a modern warrior.


Raped: Memories of a Catholic Altar Boy

Raped: Memories of a Catholic Altar Boy (October 20, 2010, Logan Square Press; 1st edition) by Dennis Domrzalski (Author), Larry Monte Jr. (Narrator) is the brutally honest and horrifying story of one man’s lifelong battle with evil.

Larry Monte Jr. was raped by a Catholic priest beginning in 1972 when he was fifteen years old. The rapes went on for two years. Larry’s mental anguish, shame and torment have lasted thirty-eight years, and will never go away.

Larry’s story looks behind the curtain of what priest sexual abuse really is and how it permanently destroys lives. In graphic, shocking and horrifying detail, Larry tells what the Catholic Church’s man of God actually did to him in cheap motel rooms throughout the state of New Mexico and how it shattered his spirit and soul.

An Albuquerque businessman, Larry has shunned the safety of clinical and sanitized terms such as “sexual abuse” in favor of blunt, brutal, everyday language and detail. He hopes that in telling his story with such honesty the world will finally come to fully comprehend the absolute horror, degradation and evil that is “priest sexual abuse.”

He hopes also that the world, Catholics in particular, will wake up to this evil and demand that the Catholic Church and its raping priests be brought to justice.


Sgt. Brandi, United States Marine Corps

Warrior’s Guide to Insanity

My first book, The Warrior’s Guide to Insanity, is meant to help those dealing with combat stress and PTSD.

Worlds at War front cover

My second book, The Warrior’s Guide To Worlds at War: The Dragon has Awakened, is now available. This Nation faces a potential crisis on an unprecedented scale. Never in our history have so many Warriors experienced so much combat; the killing, the loss, the sense of abandonment and alienation from the country they fought to defend.

You can read the first chapter, My Friend the Beast, and the third chapter, Your Journey to the Summit: Warrior Tools for Survival.

WGI: Walo cover front

I am privileged to co-author my third book, The Warrior’s Guide To Insanity: According to the Walo Chronicles, with Command Sgt. Major Billie Russell, Combat Medic, United States Army retired. This book is now available, in paperback and electronic (pdf) forms. Book Three, the Walo Chronicles, dramatically explains, in Grunt Speak, WHY us Warriors feel the way we do after returning from the battlefields of war. With real life examples, it also provides practical, “No Bullshit” tools, to overcome the horrors of Combat Deployment, and demonstrates, how every “Blooded Warrior” can live a meaningful and productive life. Walk with me now, on your Journey to Becoming!

You can read Chapter 1-6 Death is Life, and Chapter 2-4 The Goddess of War.

4 Responses to Books for Warriors

  1. D. J. Berry FTM1 USN 1964-1970 says:

    Just a comment to Stanley. A year ago I would not have found the Brandi’s books because I neither wanted to or could take what they said. If a Vet want’s these helpful tools he will find them. I found my copy in about two minuets on AMAZON. Consider yourself blessed if you truly don’t need this help, but examine closely to determine if that’s the case, because if you do need them and avoid the help that is in them, it’s just a waste of what few years we have left.

    A word to our Young Pups (Returning Heroes) …. Be very careful of what I call “Johnny Talk”. I read a very old book circa. 1939 many years ago titled “Johnny Got His Gun” that described a solder’s horrifying condition, in which he had no way left to communicate. He finally figured out that he could tap out Morse Code with his head and was able to talk to his Doctors and Nurses. Well when the flood gates opened he just couldn’t stop the flow of what he was feeling and soon the staff at the hospital decided he had gone insane. I find I will occasionally slip into “Johnny Talk” and scare the hell out of those that can’t understand what it really is. So far only the folks at the VA Hospital here in Albuquerque have been able to get by this problem. What I try to do is limit any conversation about PTSD to no more than three brief topics. If I slip into “Johnny Talk”, I have found that it doesn’t really help me or the poor sap I’m trying to relate something to (or is it really “begging for help and understanding”). In any case, try to avoid the “Johnny Talk” and do go to your nearest VA Facility. This isn’t the VA my father and grandfather warned me about. It’s loaded with bureaucracy and doesn’t move very fast but the people there are knowing and have the ability to cut you some slack, and Git-Er-Dun. So go see them yesterday, and read Sgt. Brandi’s books when you can handle them.

    BTW Don’t read Johnny Got His Gun, you have just read the only thing that will help you in it.

    Thanks Sarge for the hand up from another old timer that wasted 24 Months in the Cluster Fuck. Your books have helped me see that with some work I will find a reason for the stupid kid I was and have been for 48 years. I’ll take what I can salvage of the few years I have left and be grateful.

    “Don’t breathe the Orange Stuff” and “Hold the High Ground in All your Battles”.

    Thanks Brother

    Dick

  2. Stanley E. Logan says:

    I am an oldie–WW II vet with no psychological problems to discuss. I was a Night Fighter (P-61) pilot in the Army Air Forces (1st Lt), in the Pacific Theater all of 1945, and after the war, completed undergraduate and graduate degrees in engineering, pursued a career in science, continuing now pro bono , with a loving family. My wife and I watched your appearance last Sunday (7/10/11) on KOB TV with interest. You seemed disappointed that there was little or no response to your appearance the previous week (which we were not aware of). The two books you talked about as I can recall were The Warrior’s Guide to Insanity, and The Warrior’s Guide to Worlds at War. I found this site today to see about availability and cost to consider obtaining simply for my information, but find no courses of action offered on your website unless one IS a returning warrior in need of help, and perhaps that is the only purpose for the site. I am “up to my ears” in other activities fighting hoaxes such as man-made Global Warming, current national politics, and nuclear issues and cannot get involved in a new project, but people who hear your message need more information on what they can do beyond “We need to get these books out to returning warriors.” Like “how”–only a suggestion, as we didn’t have the current problem after WW II, to my knowledge.

  3. Mordechai Y. Scher says:

    I just wanted to commend you for your interesting site and resources. Thank you for what you do.

    I am an ER nurse, and flight medic/nurse near you. I have special regard for the vets I see and treat (many of whom are homeless and/or psychologically struggling), since I am also a combat vet. I was a combat medical sergeant in the Israel Defense Forces in the 80s. Although formal treatment of combat induced stresses and disorders was not well developed, we had a big advantage in being better understood and accepted at home. Since military service and combat experience are unfortunately widespread there, soldiers get a lot more daily respect and support in society.

    God bless you and all you do for vets!

  4. Paula Jacobs says:

    I received your website from my dear friend Tom Bierbach. We work together and became fast friends. I have the utmost respect for veterans and the men and women who are currently fighting for our freedom. Thank you for the time and effort it took to make this website.

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If you would like to discuss any challenges you may be dealing with, please contact me. (sgtabrandiusmc@gmail.com)

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