For many soldiers, the end of military service signals a cruel and new beginning. Disposable Heroes illuminates the challenges facing many veterans, particularly African Americans. Rather than finding military service to be a path to equality and upward mobility, these veterans fight just to survive. The book draws on in-depth interviews and national survey data to show the ways America is failing many black veterans today. Author Benjamin Fleury-Steiner shares the remarkable stories of 30 veterans from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. Their words illustrate the ongoing impact of explicit racial oppression such as Jim Crow segregation, white backlash against integration, and racially targeted criminal justice policies. The book traces the persistent role of racial inequalities in African American veterans’ lives before service, during active duty, and particularly after military life. Taken together, the stories in Disposable Heroes paint a compelling story of hope, struggle, and survival. Disposable Heroes makes a powerful case for ending America’s longstanding “war at home”—enduring unemployment, deficient health care, and substandard housing—that continue to plague many urban African American communities in the United States today, with particular attention to challenges of African American veterans.

"The U.S. military has traditionally been seen as an avenue of economic advancement for African-Americans, especially low-income men seeking to escape poverty. Fleury-Steiner, a Gulf War veteran and a University of Delaware assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, upends this truism in thirty searing oral histories from black veterans of Vietnam and subsequent conflicts, including Iraq. Instead of opportunity, these men, many of them from Wilmington, Delaware, found a military that mirrored the racism of civilian life and failed to provide even the basic training that would translate into better jobs after their tours of duty. The veterans interviewed often returned home to bleak circumstances exacerbated by the federal bureaucracy’s indifference to their health issues. The author intersperses these stories with details of his interviewees’ often difficult childhoods and family lives. Accounts from Vietnam veterans—'a forgotten bunch of fools' in the words of one vet—who came home to a hostile public and a health care system with a poor understanding of post-traumatic stress syndrome, dominate the book. Fleury-Steiner delivers a stinging indictment of the institution and society that continues to foist a barrage of indignities on African-American men." - Publishers Weekly

"It is not often that one reads an academic book and is transported into another world, where the words of research subjects dominate, and the stories are left bare to expose the raw, entangled webs that make up people’s lives. Benjamin Fleury-Steiner’s Disposable Heroes accomplishes this task in an eminently readable and engaging book that details how racism and poverty shape the lives of African-American veterans." - Law & Society Review