Overview

Military Writers Society of America Multiple Award-Winner: Founder's Award for Standout Book of 2019 Gold Medal Award for Memoir category For readers of Educated and The Glass Castle, comes a moving new memoir about survival, family, and a humanizing insight into the individuals who fight the nation's wars. As a child, he was raised in an unstable and violent home by a mother struggling with mental illness. An absent father with a firm belief in tough love left him with only his sister to understand or comfort him as they faced a home full of harshness, resentment, and physical abuse. As a man, he braved the war-torn landscapes of Kuwait, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Having learned early from his father that only the strong survive, he enlisted in the Air Force after high school and began an impressive military career in intelligence analysis, communications, and supporting special operations, meeting incredible individuals along the way. Baghdaddy is Bill Riley's memoir: an honest and colorful depiction of his journey through a turbulent youth and into a challenging adulthood. This very human account of living in some of the least humane environments delivers the message that no matter how different we seem, we are all trying to make the best of life and learn how to be the best versions of ourselves.

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9781612542928

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Reviews

Riley's memoir, by turns grueling and entertaining, spans his difficult childhood and early Air Force career in the Middle East. The most brutal sections cover his early life: Riley grew up in Farmingville, N.Y., on Long Island, and suffered abuse from his mother and harsh strictness from his often-absent father while trying to protect his sister, Isabel. After high school, Riley joined the Air Force in the early 1980s and became an intelligence analyst. The book focuses on his time in Kuwait before and during Operation Desert Fox as he built a coalition command center and learned about Middle Eastern cultures, and later in Baghdad six months after the first Iraq War ended. He relates his military experiences with wit, a slightly twisted sense of humor (wringing laughs from an unexpected duel with a hissing camel spider), and evocative imagery... it's an amusing, often exciting war memoir that readers of the genre will enjoy. - Publishers Weekly Riley's prose is exact and features moments of unexpected beauty . . . As much an account of America's involvement in Kuwait and Iraq as it is a personal narrative, the book provides a humanizing insight into the individuals who fight the nation's wars, and the deeper motivations that explain why they do so. A compelling and well-crafted combination of history and autobiography. --Kirkus Review Baghdaddy by Bill Riley is an insightful look at a time in history and into the life of a real warrior. It is an emotional journey that is so well told it feels like a classic novel. The narrative truly fixes images into the mind and heart of the reader--a well written human experience, not just a war memoir. --Military Writers Society of America

Riley's memoir, by turns grueling and entertaining, spans his difficult childhood and early Air Force career in the Middle East. The most brutal sections cover his early life: Riley grew up in Farmingville, N.Y., on Long Island, and suffered abuse from his mother and harsh strictness from his often-absent father while trying to protect his sister, Isabel. After high school, Riley joined the Air Force in the early 1980s and became an intelligence analyst. The book focuses on his time in Kuwait before and during Operation Desert Fox as he built a coalition command center and learned about Middle Eastern cultures, and later in Baghdad six months after the first Iraq War ended. He relates his military experiences with wit, a slightly twisted sense of humor (wringing laughs from an unexpected duel with a hissing camel spider), and evocative imagery... it's an amusing, often exciting war memoir that readers of the genre will enjoy. - Publishers Weekly

Author Information

Bill Riley is a writer and retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel and served as an intelligence analyst during the Cold War. Later, he specialized in strategy and communications and has worked with intelligence and special operations professionals from every service, virtually every intelligence agency, and several friendly foreign governments. Bill's deployments took him through combat zones across the Middle East where he played significant roles in Kuwait and Iraq, supported joint coalition operations, and helped nations rebuild after wars. He was the first US electronic warfare officer in Iraq for Operation Iraqi Freedom, he led the Air Force's largest network operations and security center, and he was the first cyberspace operations officer to receive the Air Force Combat Action Medal. He holds degrees in literature, public administration, and strategic leadership, and he is a graduate of Air Command and Staff College and the Air Force Space Command VIGILANT LOOK program. Bill lives in Idaho, just outside Boise, with his wife and two sons.

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