Hope Hodge Seck 0:00
Welcome back to Left of Boom. I m your host, Hope Hodge Seck By any metric, Bing West has faithfully rendered more than his fair share of service to his country. He served in Vietnam as an infantry officer and wrote training manuals, then later went on to become an assistant secretary of defense at the Pentagon, addressing, among other things, insurgencies in El Salvador. His son Owen followed in his footsteps, becoming a Marine officer, and then a Pentagon official overseeing special operations. But after formally ending his public service, Bing decided he had more to offer. He committed to bearing witness to the nation s conflicts, traveling to Iraq and Afghanistan for lengthy embeds with U.S. troops. He told their stories in places like Fallujah and Helmand Province in gritty and candid nonfiction books, capturing service and heroism, and the triumphs and shortfalls of military leadership in the war zone. Now he s followed those works with a new novel, The