University professor Nancy Sherman's new book, "The Untold War: Inside the Hearts and Minds and Souls of Our Soldiers," (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010) examines the moral weight of war that individual soldiers don't usually talk about.

The book, scheduled for release in March, is based on interviews with 40 American soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and explores the emotions of modern-day warriors -- how they learn to kill and cope with taking others' lives, guilt about going home when comrades stay or die in battle, the effect of bottling up their emotions and a host of other feelings and moral dilemmas.

"These ought not to be private burdens," says Sherman, who has training as a psychoanalyst. "The public needs to better understand the interior landscape of fighting a war."

A professor in the philosophy department and an adjunct at the Law Center, Sherman says devotion to war pals often competes with love of family, and these feelings are often kept private, getting lost in political debates on the justness of war.

An expert in military ethics and emotions, Sherman has firsthand experience in how soldiers don't like to talk about their experiences -- both her father and grandfather fought in world wars but never talked about their experiences in combat.

Sherman credits her father for opening the door to her current research.

While she was writing "Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind" (Oxford University Press, 2005), her father finally opened up to her about his World War II experiences. It was then that she realized the impact of telling these stories.

"These are legitimate feelings of war," she says. "We need to let them speak more in depth, tell their stories and expose their private burdens."

Though philosophy professor, Sherman's experience with military came in 1993 when she received a call for help from the U.S. Naval Academy.

The Academy had endured one of the largest cheating scandals when students were expelled after the cover-up of a stolen engineering exam. Sherman ended up designing the school's first military ethics course and served as the inaugural holder of the Distinguished Chair of Ethics at the Academy from 1997-1999.

By the end of her term at the Academy, the scholar had fully developed an interest in what goes on in the military mind.

"I couldn't leave it behind," she says. "I wanted to better understand the inner war that soldiers often face while they are in uniform and after they take it off."

William Quinn (SFS'10) says Sherman's work helps soldiers better evaluate their own emotions and the difficulties they may face in life.

"It is unusual to find a scholar whose work has such a tremendous impact on those about whom she writes," says Quinn, who is one of the returning soldiers Sherman interviewed for her upcoming book. The international politics major served as a detainee interrogator in Iraq.

What makes Sherman's work exceptional is that she focuses on the soul of the warrior, says Law Center professor David Luban.

"Where many other philosophers debate what kinds of military tactics are morally justified, or when a state is morally permitted to use force, Nancy writes about the inner life of soldiers and their families," Luban says. "She combines her training as a psychoanalyst, her origins as a scholar of classical philosophy, and her years of teaching in the U.S. Naval Academy to produce writing that is at once analytical and deeply humane."

Source: Blue & Gray