Drawing on the literature of combat, from Homer and Shakespeare to Erich Maria Remarque and Michael Herr, Hedges argues that human beings are conditioned to embrace what he calls "the myth of war"--The idea that combat is noble, selfless, and glorious, and yet, if human history is any guide, nations and imperiums have stumbled and even fallen when they believed the myths peddled about war and about themselves. The reality of war, asserts Hedges, with first-hand experience, is about the destruction of culture, the perversion of human desire, and the embrace, ultimately, of death over life.