Andrew Carroll visits WMU

Best-selling American author, editor and activist, Andrew Carroll, will share correspondence from U.S. soldiers from American Wars during a visit on Friday, Feb. 10, to the campus of Western Michigan University.

Sponsored by the Department of Military Science in the Haworth College of Business and the University Center for the Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences, Carroll’s talk is scheduled for 2 p.m. in Brown Auditorium, in Schneider Hall. The event is free and open to the public. His talk will be followed by a question-and-answer period and a reception at 3 p.m. Reservations for the talk can be made by contacting 269.387.5050. Parking is available in the nearby Fetzer Center parking lot.

Carroll is the editor of several New York Times best sellers, including “War Letters” and “Behind the Lines.” He also edited, on a pro bono basis, “Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families.” The book inspired the film “Operation Homecoming,” which was nominated for an Oscar and won an Emmy for best documentary.

In 1998, Carroll founded the Legacy Project, an all-volunteer initiative that honors veterans and active-duty troops by preserving their wartime letters and e-mails. Carroll has traveled to all 50 states and more than 40 countries, including Iraq and Afghanistan, to seek out letters, and he has collected, to date, an estimated 85,000 previously unpublished correspondences from every war in U.S. history.

In 2001, Carroll revived the “Armed Services Editions” (ASEs), which are pocket-sized editions of bestselling books originally distributed to service members overseas during World War II. He worked with major publishers to reissue them, and he has distributed a quarter of a million free ASEs to U.S. troops around the world, including thousands of books he personally handed out in Baghdad and Kabul.

Carroll’s efforts have been profiled on “NBC’s Nightly News,” “FOX News,” CNN, PBS, The History Channel, NPR, “CBS Sunday Morning,” “The Today Show,” “Good Morning America,” and “Nightline,” and he was featured as a “Person of the Week” on “ABC’s World News Tonight.” Carroll has also been a contributing editor and writer to numerous publications, including the New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Time, and National Geographic.

Carroll’s interest in letters began in 1989 after his home in Washington, D.C. burned down. Although no one was hurt in the fire, all of Carroll’s possessions, including his letters, were destroyed. The loss prompted Carroll to realize the value of letters and how important it is to preserve them for posterity.

More recently, Carroll founded the “Here Is Where” campaign in association with National Geographic Traveler. The project is an all-volunteer effort to photograph and document historic locations in the United States.

Carroll graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University in 1993, and, among other accolades, he is the recipient of the DAR’s Medal of Honor; The Order of Saint Maurice, bestowed by the National Infantryman’s Association; and The Free Spirit Award, presented by the Freedom Forum.

Carroll lives in Washington, D.C. He edited “Operation Homecoming” on a pro bono basis.

Related Links

Legacy Project

“Here Is Where”

National Geographic Traveler