In 1982 a high school shooting shook the community of Sabreton, Pennsylvania. A year later signs of the shooting had been swept clean and students seemed to take events in stride. For Gary, an insecure 1983 Sabreton freshman, this only added to his anxiety as he began what promised to be a humiliating year of school. The Rocket’s Red Glare is a story of the friendships that sustained, inspired and ultimately carried Gary through those turbulent years. He and his friends were, for the most part, middle class kids who were drawn to the New Wave and Punk music popular at that time. For them, drinking, dancing, and loving it all seemed so right but ended so badly. Five years after high school Gary is now on his own. He is an aspiring artist balancing a hatred for his corporate day job with his live-in girlfriend’s desire for stability. But soon his world will change when he receives a call from an old friend. An impromptu road trip across America, a tape of a long forgotten band and a suicide force him to face the question of whether he has really survived anything.

They were young, and they were fighting a war no one wanted to fight. They chose to serve their country despite these challenges. In In Our Duffel Bags , authors Richard Geschke and Robert A. Toto narrate the stories and the experiences of what junior army officers faced as citizen soldiers during pre-voluntary military service from 1969 to 1972. This memoir provides an inside view of the military on the training fields of the Cold War in West Germany and on the combat fields of Vietnam. It presents a poignant and detailed drawing of what junior officers contended with during these turbulent times in American history. From the training grounds in Fort Benning, Georgia; to the jungle warfare school in Panama; to the streets of West Germany; and to the rice paddies of Vietnam, In Our Duffel Bags intimately describes the sights, sounds, and smells of life in the military Much more than a historical account, In Our Duffel Bags interweaves Geschkes and Totos individual experiences and perspectives, ties them back to their families, and sets it all within the volatile historical and political setting of the 1960s and 1970s. It shows how these times affected history as well as impact current politics.