• Author: Jon Krakauer
• ISBN: 978-0-385-52226-7

Where do men win glory in our modern society? In sports, in battle, in service, in academics, in friends, in family? Author Jon Krakauer examines this and more through the prism of one man’s life and death in “Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman”. Krakauer takes us beneath the surface images of Pat Tillman the wild-haired football player and buttoned-down Army Ranger to introduce us to a man of great depth and character as he lays out the life story of his subject. Pat Tillman grew up in a happy home in Northern California with his parents and brothers. Challenging himself physically seems to have been part of his DNA whether he was cliff diving with friends or over-coming doubts about his size and ability as a football player in high school, college and the NFL. A violent incident that landed Pat in juvenile hall could have derailed his life, instead Tillman matured and went from being an academic under-achiever to a Dean’s List student at Arizona State University who eventually married his long time girlfriend Marie. A late round draft pick, Pat developed himself into an All-Pro caliber player who was hotly pursued by other NFL teams who hoped to lure him away from the Cardinals. Instead, his principles caused him to forsake millions as an NFL player to enlist as an Army Ranger in the wake of 9/11 and encouraged choices that ultimately put him and finally kept him in harm’s way. In the dictionary the word virtue has the following primary definitions: moral excellence, goodness, righteousness, conformity of one’s life and conduct to moral and ethical principles. The definition fits equally well with Pat Tillman as characterized in the pages of Krakauer’s book and it may well have been his undoing. Krakauer shows that Tillman enlisted to do what he saw as the right thing, but soon found doubts as to where the nations leaders where taking him. “All we ask is that it is duly noted that we harbor no illusions of virtue.” That sentence from Pat Tillman’s journal concluded an entry from February 2003 where Pat contemplated the likely prospect of being sent to Iraq with his brother Kevin for “no clear purpose” other than perhaps an “imperial whim”. Eventually, Pat meets his grim fate in a dusty corner of Afghanistan. Felled by friendly-fire from a member of his own Ranger unit, the facts of Tillman’s death are covered up and exploited for propaganda in ways that would have clearly appalled the man himself. Once the last page is turned in Jon Krakauer’s gripping book the reader is left with no illusions as to the utter lack of virtue throughout the army’s entire chain of command all the way up to President Bush.