The tumultuous story of two gay soldiers forging a powerful friendship before, during and after Don't Ask Don't Tell. Brett and Drake battle for love and freedom to survive three wars and one exhausting policy.
They adopt wildly different strategies to outmaneuver the silent adversary, yet each one rises deftly toward colonel, inside the great American war machine as it rumbles through misadventures in the Middle East.
Two harrowing love stories — at war.
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Coming June 2026
From HarperCollins
Firm pub date
Editing Neary Done
Written by a former gay infantry grunt who has shadowed these gay soldiers since 2000, when they were in hiding. It began with a Salon story that won a GLAAD Media Award, for best online story of the year.
Soldiers First explores three decades of social upheaval and military adventures through the lens of these two gripping lives, and the men they loved.
Me, as a young soldier at Fort Benning. (I was infantry drill corporal in my BDUs, and new lieutenant in my dress blues.)
My Latest
New Edition
New Preface
My Story
Dave Cullen has written definitive works on mass murders for two decades, first with Columbine, then Parkland: Birth of a Movement, both New York Times bestsellers. The former gay infantry grunt is completing a gay soldiers book a quarter century in the making. It depicts the arc of the gay rights struggle through the lens of two extraordinary lives — which he has been immersed in since 2000.
Columbine is the consensus definitive account of the horror that inspired two decades of killers. Parkland focuses exclusively on the response, refusing to name the killer. It is story of hope: the genesis of the extraordinary March for Our Lives movement. Dave was with the MFOL students from the beginning, with unparalleled access behind the scenes.
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Columbine made two dozen Best of 2009 lists and won several major awards, including the Edgar and Goodreads Choice Awards. It has been translated into eight languages, appears on several all-time True Crime Top 10 lists, and named one of the 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the quarter century.
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Parkland made ten major year-end Best Lists, was nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award (Best Nonfiction of 2019), and longlisted for the American Library Association's Andrew Carnegie Medal.
Dave has written for New York Times, Atlantic, Vanity Fair, London Times, BuzzFeed, Politico, Guardian, Washington Post, New Republic, Newsweek, Daily Beast, Slate, Salon, The Millions, Lapham's Quarterly, etc., and has appeared on most of the major networks in the US, and across Europe, Asia, Australia and South America.
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Dave lives in Chicago and is uncle to 11 cool humans and 1 adorable corgi, Bobby Sneakers.
Reviews
Parkland Reviews
Starred Review
Cullen has produced masterpieces that are simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful about a saner future.
Starred Review
The author of the groundbreaking Columbine, brings his eloquence, expertise, combination of deep research and concision, and unbiased perspective to yet another mass school shooting, revealing its deepest layers and resonance. . . .
This moving, defining, and important account
of an essential and vital youth movement dedicated to change and saving lives belongs in every public and school library.
Starred Review
In this page-turner, something hopeful has risen phoenixlike from the Valentine’s Day 2018 massacre. . . . Both realistic and optimistic, this insightful and compassionate chronicle is a fitting testament to a new chapter in American responses to mass shootings.
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10 authors to read in 2019
— AppleBooks
This winter's best nonfiction reads
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7 Most Anticipated nonfiction of 2019
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Top 10 Politics & Pop Culture, Spring 2019
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10 Southern books we want to read in 2019
— Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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New books to look forward to in 2019
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Books We'll be talking about in 2019
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​most anticipated international books
— Canadian Broadcasting System
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Exceptional
It's exceptional. I really look forward to it being unleashed to the world, because the Parkland students really did something. They are a political force to be reckoned with in our country.
TV
Dave has been a frequent analyst about Columbine, Parkland, school shootings, gays and soldiers on Today, NBC Nightly News, PBS Newshour, Nightline, Morning Edition, CBS This Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, CBSN, Anderson Cooper 360, Rachel Maddow, All In With Chris Hayes, Katie, Talk of the Nation, Hannity, and numerous documentaries including CNN, NatGeo, Showtime and The Nineties.
Stories
