Andrew Carroll, 37, is the editor of several bestselling books, including Letters of a Nation, Behind the Lines, and War Letters, which was made into a PBS documentary. He is also the editor of Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families, based on the National Endowment for the Arts national initiative of the same name. “Operation Homecoming,” the documentary, will appear on PBS starting in April 2007.
Carroll’s most recent book is Grace Under Fire: Letters of Faith in Times of War, published by Doubleday and WaterBrook Press.
Carroll is the founder and director of the Legacy Project, a national, all-volunteer initiative that works to honor and remember U.S. troops and veterans by preserving their wartime correspondence. To date, the Legacy Project has received more than 80,000 never-before-seen letters and e-mails from every military conflict in American history.
Carroll is also the co-founder, with the late Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky, of the American Poetry & Literacy Project, which distributes free poetry books to the public in hospitals, schools, jury waiting rooms, train stations, hotels, airports, supermarkets, libraries, and similar venues. Since 1993, the APL Project has handed out more than 1,000,000 free poetry books to people from all walks of life.
In 2001, Carroll revived the "Armed Services Editions" (ASEs), which are pocket-sized books made especially for the military and handed out to U.S. troops abroad. More than 1,300 titles in all were first published during World War II, including mysteries, biographies, crime stories, adventure novels, and classic works of literature. The original ASEs were discontinued in 1947, and Carroll has been working with major publishers to reissue them. He has distributed a quarter of a million free ASEs to U.S. servicemen and women around the world, including thousands of books he personally handed out in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Carroll is considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on wartime correspondence, and his efforts have been profiled on Oprah, NBC's Nightly News, FOX News, CNN, The History Channel (two different documentaries), C-Span, National Public Radio, CBS Sunday Morning, the Today Show, Good Morning America, and Nightline (which devoted a full broadcast to the Legacy Project). Carroll was also featured as a “Person of the Week” on ABC’s World News Tonight. Carroll has also been a contributing editor and/or writer to many local and national publications, including Guideposts, Time, the New Yorker, and National Geographic.
A 1993 magna cum laude graduate of Columbia University, Carroll has received, among other accolades, 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. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Courtesy of Random House.