Soldiers and Civilization

I’m Reed Bonadonna, author of Soldiers and Civilization.  I served for a long time as an infantry officer and field historian in the Marine Corps.  I deployed to Lebanon in the early 1980s and to Iraq in 2003.  I’m a graduate of Virginia Military Institute, with graduate degrees from Clark University (MA, English) and Boston University (Ph.D., English).  My wife and I live in Larchmont, NY, a Westchester suburb of New York City.  We raised three sons, two now in college and one graduate living and working in the city.  This picture was taken last June during a family vacation when we rented a house in the town of Port-en-Bessin in Normandy.

In this site, I plan to continue the discussion of some of the themes and issues raised in my forthcoming book Soldier and Civilization: the importance of the military profession to the theory and practice of civilization, the mutual dependency of civil society and the military, and the role of the humanities in the profession of arms.  When Kipling said, “I’ll sing you a soldier as fair as I may,” he understood that a soldier is made of words, the laws and regulations, the songs and narrative, the often somber poetry of our ancient calling.

I also plan to use this site a testing ground for my next book, tentatively titled, “How to Think Like an Officer,” a work that I hope will be useful to “other ranks,” to aspiring officers, to civilians, and to officers themselves, maybe most of all.

Peace, Reed