“This book presents straightforward, practical ideas and advice from a double-handful of contemporary writers. Edited by memoirist Traig, a longtime 826 Valencia tutor, it's comprised largely of excerpts from wide-ranging, insightful round-table discussions among nonfiction practitioners . . . Besides lessons on celebrating the ordinary and the importance of humor, contributors also offer ways to push through the inevitable writer's block and handle miffed family and friends. Their guidance, complemented by writing exercises and work plans, should prove useful, informative and motivating for writers at just about any level.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Nothing gets held back in Soft Spots, Clint Van Winkle's account of his two years of duty as a Marine sergeant in Iraq. He describes the exhilaration of being in a place where he was authorized to kill and where freedom was, in a sense, absolute—precisely because he could die at any moment. We hear about attacks on Iraqis who may or may not have been civilians, and later of the ignorance he finds on a college campus at home . . . This ambiguity stems from the nature of the war he fought. The soldiers lived in an almost hermetically sealed society and in a state of near-constant fear and rage. And they had unmatched lethal firepower at their command. 'My war,' writes Van Winkle, 'was an impersonal war full of indiscriminate firing and long-distance death.' But the ambiguity is also stylistic, an expression of the author's hallucinatory state of mind in the months following combat. He moves without warning from the streets of Phoenix to the sands of Iraq and back again. He finds himself full of unreasoning anger; he fights with his wife. Having finally realized that he's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he struggles to get help. Van Winkle's unseen dead have followed him home."—Juliet Wittman, The Washington Post