Doug Stanton‘s Afghan Adventure

May 24, 2009

Doug Stanton:
The Making of a Bestseller


By Rick Coates 5/25/09

After nearly a month on the road promoting his new book Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of U.S. Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan, bestselling author Doug Stanton returns to his native Traverse City to conclude his nationwide book tour. He will give a reading and do a book signing as part of a fundraising reception for scholarships at Pathfinder School on Thursday, May 28 at the Opera House in Traverse City.
Stanton’s first book In Harm’s Way (the story of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis during WWII) spent nine months on the New York Times Bestseller List in 2001 including several weeks in the Top 10. He has enjoyed a 20-year successful writing career contributing articles to Esquire, Outside, Sports Afield and he currently is a contributing editor to Men’s Journal. He has written in-depth features on George Clooney, Sting, Clint Eastwood, John Mellencamp and Harrison Ford among others.
His book is currently #10 on the New York Times Bestseller List and a week ago he graced the cover of their Sunday New York Times Book Review. In just three weeks since its release, Horse Soldiers is already in its fourth printing.
Stanton began his writing career by attending Interlochen Arts Academy during high school. Upon graduation he went off to study writing at Hampshire College in Massachusetts and also earned his MFA from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. In addition to his work as a writer, he taught writing at the college level and worked as a commercial sports fisherman and caretaker of Robert Frost’s house in Vermont.
He continues to reside in his lifelong hometown of Traverse City, where he is a member of the advisory board of the Interlochen Center for the Arts’ Motion Picture Arts program, and a trustee of the Pathfinder School. He and his wife Anne (an investigative reporter for the Express) have three children.

Northern Express: For an author, appearing on the cover of the New York Times Book Review is the musician’s equivalent of appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. When you take a step back and think about it, close to 750,000 books are going to be published in 2009 and only 52 will make the cover, so this is a big deal. So what was that initial thought when you saw the review?
Doug Stanton: Certainly I was elated when I was informed that this was going to happen. As a writer you have no control over reviews, in fact In Harm’s Way was never reviewed by the New York Times. What this new Times review does is put the story in context to tell readers that this is still an emerging story. I was in Dallas on that Sunday and I took a taxi to a gas station to get a copy. Typically I am used to walking to Horizon Books in downtown Traverse City on Sundays to pick up my copy. So when I opened the paper to the Book Review section my initial thought was we had not given up. If this had been an easy book to write someone else would have written it as it required travel to dangerous places, hundreds of interviews and understanding a couple of cultures. So when I had that review in my hands that is what I felt and I was so glad that we (Anne, his wife, and others who believed in the book) stuck with it.

NE: How has the book tour been?
Stanton: It has been great and the tour is serving two purposes. Certainly to promote the book but it has also afforded me the opportunity to reconnect with several of the soldiers. I also had a one hour meeting with Lt. General John F. Mulholland who is the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. During my visit to the base I was also able to address several officers and others. I also went to Fort Campbell which is home to the 5th Special Forces Group and addressed 150 Special Forces soldiers there. So those two stops were my chance to say thank you to the people who helped me with the book. I also got to visit the Pentagon and have a conversation with Under Secretary of Defense Mike Vickers and also while in Washington D.C. got to catch up with Senator Carl Levin (Chair of the Armed Forces committee) and give him a copy of the book.

NE: So what was the general’s take on the book?
STANTON: It was very positive. His take is that the book tells their story very well and in particular their story as it relates to their involvement in Afghanistan. The Special Forces are a unique breed. They have this ability to blend in, adapt to whatever culture they are placed in and the ability to do so rather quickly. They understand a society that they go into as well as any college graduate or Ph.D who has studied the culture. They have to understand the nuances of a society so that they might move around and not offend anyone. Certainly their safety depends on how well they are able to function in this world they are dropped into.

NE: Explain what happened to these Special Forces in 2001, because 9/11 happened and they were literally in Afghanistan a few months later, forced to do battle on horses:
STANTON: First, they got dropped into this stalemate between the Afghan Northern Alliance and the Taliban. Certainly they had no idea going in that they were going to have battle on horseback, but that is where these guys thrive is in these environments which would try the serpentry of most normal people. I went to a week of their training and it is really amazing these scenarios that they are put through to learn how to become adaptable to any environment quickly.
So these guys are trained to expect the unexpected so they got on these horses and did just fine. The challenge was the saddles were too small and the horses were generally small. It was very punishing for a lot of these guys to be on these horses. They were wearing a lot of gear and the weight of the gear would pound them into the saddle. One guy who I ran into at Fort Campbell a couple of weeks ago actually ruptured a disc as he was getting bounced around going up these mountain trails some 7,000 feet high.

NE: Why had this story not been told until your book came out?
STANTON: There had been some brief mentions in Time Magazine that my wife saw and clipped and gave to me, which is how I got the idea to write the book. But two things happened; frst they were in Afghanistan for a short period of time and these guys ended up in Iraq, so they couldn’t tell their story. Secondly it has to do with the culture of these soldiers. They just don’t talk about what they have done. When you are around Fort Campbell or Fort Bragg you see these bumper stickers that say “The Quiet Professionals.” These guys just don’t talk to writers because what they do depends on blending into a society. They are actually trained to not want the spotlight.

NE: Both of your books are based on incidents that involve war, but your work for magazines primarily profiled celebrities. Are there similarities in the subject matters?
STANTON: If you look at my magazine profiles, a lot of them are about work. I was never interested in the celebrity; rather as a celebrity, I wondered who they were when no one was looking at them. I was always very curious about how they did their job.
It is like in that Hemingway short story the Big Two Hearted River, when Nick Adams is going up stream and a lot of the story is devoted to him frying breakfast over the campfire and going out and gathering the grasshoppers. If you read that story it is really about work. It is the work of survival and I think that is what interests me. Even my profiles in the magazines there is this underlying theme of survival. I look back on my piece on John Mellencamp and it is about his attempt to survive being famous.

NE: Okay, but back-to-back books with war themes; are you at all concerned that your legacy as a writer will be similar to that of a character actor -- you will be known as Doug Stanton the author of books on war?
STANTON: No, I hope that my legacy is one of a writer who looked at these existential moments where people have to make a decision between being selfish and selfless and hopefully prevail. I like the story of the ordinary person who is suddenly called to be extraordinary in some way that they hadn’t previously imagined.
That said though, I can’t think of a more interesting topic to write about than the state of the world we find ourselves in right now, which is mostly at war. I don’t know why more writers are not trying to engage with this idea of what is going on in the world beyond our own borders and try to find a language to articulate the violence that we see around us in a way that makes sense as a narrative and makes sense as a story that we can tell each other.
The reality is I wrote this book to try to understand what kind of world is going to be inherited by my kids. After 9/11 happened, most people did not know what was going to happen. What happened to us on 9/11 is that we finally experienced the sense of uncertainty of what most of the globe already had been feeling on a daily basis. So I think our art needs to reflect that. I do not know if it does right now with our music or novels, maybe our plays which seem to respond more quickly to cultural currents.

NE: What were the frustrations and challenges you faced along the way with this book project?
STANTON: Well first it took six years to complete and I thought maybe it would take three, maybe four years at tops. Just after I started work on this book a vast majority of soldiers disappeared into Iraq and didn’t emerge for a year. When they returned it was not a given that I would be interviewing them because they had not participated in a book of this nature before. There was not a press affairs officer at Fort Campbell for the 5th Special Forces to facilitate my interviews. Another challenge was self imposed, as I was trying to write Lawrence of Arabia, versus a book torn from the headlines. It was also a challenge to digest all the military jargon and keep the book as a story and not some sort of book tactics and strategies.

NE: So what is next?
STANTON: I am exploring some options to write for TV and looking to write my first novel. I started out in poetry at the Writers Workshop and switched halfway through to fiction. But in reality I graduated with no practical skills to make a living as I writer on a day-to-day basis. I started writing journalism to make a living and I am really glad I did. As for new subjects, I would like to try some humor and just write in a new format. There has been interest in making In Harm’s Way (into a film) but the cost of making a movie of this nature in the water would be over $100 million, so I am hoping that we can figure a way to make it for a lot less. That is my goal. As for Horse Soldiers, Jerry Bruckheimer (Pirates of the Caribbean and Black Hawk Down) has optioned it for a movie (His production company lists Horse Soldiers as one of his films in production).

NE: How about your next book of non-fiction? Are you going for a trilogy with another book themed around war?
STANTON: Not sure yet; I am exploring some different ideas. If I were to do a trilogy, the next one would be about Vietnam. I believe that those soldiers deserve some great book. But they might need to be a bit older before they let someone write it.
The great WWII books didn’t happen until those veterans achieved the age of 70. It seems for men that at that age they are able to look back and talk about uncomfortable and sensitive issues. The interest in the WWII narrative coincided with the aging of that population.
When I was doing book signings for In Harm’s Way I would have these women come and ask if I would sign these books for their husbands who were in Vietnam and I would sign and ask where is he and often the wife would say he is standing over in the corner of the book store but he can’t come and talk to you. See, guys in their 50s are in the prime of their life and they do not have the time or the resources or the interest in being that vulnerable about sensitive moments in their lives. But I think in the next 10 years a big book on Vietnam could be done, so we will see.

NE: So what did you learn from a writing perspective with this book?
STANTON: The art of storytelling I learned within In Harm’s Way. I think with Horse Soldiers I learned that you can draw people in around this campfire of common experience and draw them in enough that hopefully they are paying attention to something they normally wouldn’t be drawn to. I was curious how women would respond to Horse Soldiers. So far I have found they are not concerned that it is about war but instead they are drawn in by the drama of the story.

An Evening of Conversation, Food and Drink with Doug Stanton
Doug Stanton, New York Times best-selling author of Horse Soldiers and In Harm’s Way, will appear Thursday, May 28 at Traverse City’s Opera House, 7 p.m.

Only three weeks after its publication, Horse Soldiers is in a fourth printing, and has garnered spectacular attention and reviews, including the prestigious cover review of the May 17 Sunday New York Times Book Review.
Horse Soldiers is currently #10 on the New York Times Bestseller list. This is the book’s first official ranking on the coveted list, coming prior to the Stanton’s nationwide book publicity tour or national media attention.
Stanton’s Horse Soldiers is for those who like their history “told through the eyes of heroic grunts, sergeants, and captains. Think of Stephen Ambrose’s Band of Brothers or Stanton’s own best seller In Harm’s Way,” said the New York Times. “Stanton packs a huge amount of research into a thrilling action ride of a book.”

Fresh from his appearances on the Today Show and Morning Joe during his national media tour that concludes with his hometown appearance on Thursday, Stanton will talk about Afghanistan today, his travel to that country as he researched Horse Soldiers, and of the remarkable American and Afghan citizens who are at the dramatic heart of the book.
Says Tom Brokaw, “Horse Soldiers is a great read-- a riveting story. We’re hearing many of these stories for the first time -- and from those who waged a war worthy of Rudyard Kipling, James Bond and Davy Crockett.”
Stanton may be joined by a special guest featured in Horse Soldiers. After the presentation he will sign copies of his book via Horizon Books.
An afterglow reception will take also place featuring regional wines, beers, hors d’oeuvres from Silver Swan and gifts. C-Span will be on hand to tape the event for Book TV.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for students with net proceeds benefiting Pathinder School’s Scholarship Fund. For additional details, go to
cityoperahouse.org or call the box office at 231-941-8082.