Full title: Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield

Ashley’s War, by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, is a nonfiction account of the first wave of women in the US Army who volunteered to be part of the “cultural support teams” that accompanied Army Rangers and Green Berets on missions in Afghanistan.

These teams were developed beginning in 2011 because it was felt that women soldiers could interact more effectively with Afghan women, most of whom are forbidden from interacting with men who are not immediate relatives. The program proved successful. Women soldiers came to be seen as a “third gender,” one whose presence didn’t threaten the social status of Afghan men.

But Ashley’s War isn’t about Afghan culture or the politics of war. Instead it’s firmly focused on the stories of the American soldiers who volunteered for this program, and who survived the brief but rigorous training. These women came from diverse backgrounds. Some were regular army, some were National Guard. Some were on their own from a very young age, some came from strong families. Some were from families with traditional military backgrounds, and some were from civilian families. All were athletic and determined, and most joined the military because they wanted to be soldiers, and to experience combat.

As the story develops, it’s fascinating to see these women coming to terms with what it means to be a “strong woman character,” as we so frequently discuss in fiction:

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Yes, I’m a bit behind the curve on this one, and no, I haven’t seen the movie (though I plan to).

All The President’s Men is the nonfiction memoir of Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, originally published in 1974. It recounts their investigation of the 1972 Watergate Hotel break-in, and the gradual revelation of scandal surrounding the 1972 presidential election, that ultimately led to the resignation of President Nixon.

These events took place when I was a child, too young to follow the slowly breaking story in detail, but old enough that nearly all the names in the book are still very familiar to me. I picked up the ebook of the 40th anniversary edition, which happened to be on sale for a ridiculously low price — and I found it fascinating. (more…)

My latest read was Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It, by Lawrence Lessig. The book poses the question of why the big issues facing the United States are forever kicked down the road by Congress, and as a corollary, why the issues that Congress does spend its time on are not the issues that matter to the great majority of the American people.

The answer posed by the author in a very convincing manner is that the single greatest concern of most senators and Congressional representatives is to get re-elected, and re-election takes money, and money comes from – well, you know the answer. Money comes from corporations and well-funded organizations seeking to advance their bottom line.

The fascinating argument of this book is the author’s explanation of how this funding system works, and it’s not by outright (illegal) bribery. He describes a complex system involving personal relationships, gift culture, well-connected and well-paid lobbyists, and “donations” of a few thousand dollars that can be leveraged into millions if only the right piece of legislation is passed. And it’s all legal.

There is much more – enough to derail the most optimistic among us, I suspect. At the end of the book, Lessig offers several strategies that might solve the problem and return our representatives to what should be their true work: representing the voters who put them in office, not the contributors who made their campaign possible. None of the solutions struck me as likely to make any difference. The most promising one was to work on getting the required plurality of states to call for a constitutional convention to address campaign finance reform – and of course we’re a long, long way from that ever happening.

Strangely enough, this book affirmed the cynical worldview that’s a background element of some of my upcoming work, particularly the story due in an issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction and, sadly, it’s affirmation that I did not go too far in my extrapolations.