Unfortunately, due to a family medical emergency, author James Brady will not be able to travel to Chicago for his scheduled appearance (11/15/07) on Front & Center with John Callaway to discuss his new book "Why Marines Fight".

They have always answered the call of duty without question. They march without hesitation into the harshest places in the world, through the line of fire, and have for more than two hundred years. In his new book, author James Brady asks a simple question, and receives answers drawn from memories draped in sweat, frost, and smoke: why do Marines fight?

The stories in Why Marines Fight are told by fifty men and women who have taken remarkably different paths in life: James Webb was elected to the Senate in 2006, Gerald Coleman played in a World Series with the Yankees, and Jack Rowe battles rattlesnakes over a prized patch of avocadoes; some, like Captain Lauren Edwards, are still in the service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why Marines Fight is not a book of blood and guts and generalities. "I wanted to explore if it was fear, discipline, love of country, hatred of the enemy or a desire to prove oneself," said Brady. Many of the men and women in this book wrestle with their replies; Brady records battle cries and moments of doubt in equal measure, with chapters that peer out through the eyes of teenagers and the old men they survived to become. Speaking with an authoritative ‘we’ to mark the experiences he shared with many of his subjects, Brady answers the simple question of his title with a complex, absorbing tribute to the U.S. Marine Corps.

James Brady
James Brady commanded a Marine rifle platoon during the Korean War and was awarded the Bronze Star for valor. He captured these experiences in his most recent book, The Marine, in the best-selling novels Warning of War and The Marines of Autumn, and in his highly praised memoir The Coldest War. He writes weekly columns for Forbes.com and Parade magazine.