Book excerpt: Outrageous, hilarious, and absolutely candid, Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green is Johnny Rico’s firsthand account of fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, a memoir that also reveals the universal truths about the madness of war. No one would have picked Johnny Rico for a soldier. The son of an aging hippie father, Johnny was overeducated and hostile to all authority. But when 9/11 happened, the twenty-six-year-old probation officer dropped everything to become an “infantry combat killer.” But if he’d thought that serving his country would be the kind of authentic experience a reader of The Catcher in the Rye would love, he quickly realized he had another thing coming. In Afghanistan he found himself living a Lord of the Flies existence among soldiers who feared civilian life more than they feared the Taliban–guys like Private Cox, a musical prodigy busy “planning his future poverty,” and Private Mulbeck, who didn’t know precisely which country he was in. Life in a combat zone meant carnage and courage–but it also meant tedious hours standing guard, punctuated with thoughtful arguments about whether Bea Arthur was still alive. Utterly uncensored and full of dark wit, Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green is a poignant, frightening, and heartfelt view of life in this and every man’s army.