The Reading List: Books for Women Who Served

I have a stack of books on my nightstand that is roughly the height of a footlocker, and my reading glasses live permanently on top of my head so I can lose them in a hurry. Some books you read for information. These you read for recognition.

If you served, you know the strange thrill of finding a book that gets it right: the boredom, the absurdity, the friendships that form in about forty-five minutes and last for decades. Here are six I keep recommending to the women I served with, plus a note on who each one is for.

The memoirs

Love My Rifle More Than You by Kayla Williams

Williams served as an Army Arabic linguist in Iraq, and her memoir is blunt, funny and not remotely interested in making anyone comfortable. She writes about being a woman in a mostly male unit with the kind of honesty that made some readers squirm and made a lot of women veterans nod hard enough to pull something. It is about the job, the men, the heat and the constant low hum of being watched. If you ever felt like you were representing every woman in uniform every time you walked into a room, start here.

Shoot Like a Girl by Mary Jennings Hegar

Hegar flew rescue helicopters for the Air Force in Afghanistan, was wounded on a mission and kept flying. That alone would be a book. But the second half, about her fight to challenge the policy that kept women out of ground combat roles, is what makes it stick. She is direct and stubborn in the best way, and you will recognize the particular fatigue of being excellent at your job and still having to argue for the right to do it.

Every Day Is a Gift by Tammy Duckworth

Some books you read for information. These you read for recognition.

Duckworth was an Army helicopter pilot who lost both legs when her aircraft was hit in Iraq, and she went on to a career in public office. Whatever your politics, the memoir is worth reading for the chapters on recovery and on her early life, which was far less tidy than her resume suggests. It is a book about getting back up, written by someone who had to relearn how to do that literally.

The reporting

Ashley's War by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Lemmon is a journalist, not a veteran, and she tells the story of the women recruited for Cultural Support Teams who went out on missions alongside special operations forces in Afghanistan. It reads like a thriller, but its heart is the friendship among the women themselves. Keep tissues nearby. Also keep your phone nearby, because you will want to text someone you served with.

Soldier Girls by Helen Thorpe

Another journalist's book, this one follows three women in the Indiana National Guard through deployment and the years after. What I love about it is that it does not stop when they come home. It sits with the messy part: the marriages, the jobs, the kids, the things that do not fit neatly back into civilian life. Guard and Reserve readers in particular will see themselves in it.

The one for the plane

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Yes, it is old, it is about men and it is set in World War II. Read it anyway. Heller understood military bureaucracy better than any regulation writer ever has, and if you have ever been told you could not do something until you did the thing that required you to have already done it, you will laugh so loud the person in the next seat will ask if you are okay. You will say yes. You will be lying a little, because you will be thinking about your last PCS.

How to read these

A small suggestion: read one memoir and one of the reported books back to back. The memoirs give you the view from inside one woman's head. The reporting gives you the wider frame. Together they cover a lot of ground that no single book can.

And if you have a favorite that is not here, tell us. We are always building the next stack, and the nightstand can take a little more weight.