U.S. Army Captain Craig Mullaney tells the story of his personal evolution, moving from his blue-collar upbringing in Rhode Island through his education at West Point and as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, to his deployment as an infantry platoon leader along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mullaney's "unforgiving minute" came as he learned of the first casualty among his men in Afghanistan. Hailed as a thoughtful and compelling coming-of-age story, his book is a sustained meditation on the intellectual and physical discipline and the emotional compassion required of a wartime officer. (#15602)