4. 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military
Edited by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg (2006)
A short, accessible anthology often used in counter-recruitment outreach. It’s not a how‑to manual, but it’s a core resource for youth education and tabling efforts.
So you're walking out of school and parked at the gate is a new, bright red Ford Mustang with a hulk of a man in the front seat. He's sporting a razor cut and wraparound shades. Before you can pass he's out of the car and blocking your path. "Mind if I take a minute"―he has you by the arm now―"to tell you about the great life in today's Army and why you should seriously think about signing up?" The armed forces are having a tough time attracting new recruits lately, in no small part due to the mess in Iraq. Young people are getting wise to the many excellent reasons not to join the U.S. military, and this handy book brings them all together, combining accessible writing with hard facts and devastating personal testimony. Contributors with firsthand experience point out the dangers facing soldiers, describe the tricks used by recruiters, and emphasize that there really are other options, even in a sluggish economy. It's essential reading for anyone thinking of signing up.
Purchase at: Amazon |
5. We Won’t Go: The Truth on Military Recruiters & the Draft; A Guide to Resistance
Edited by LeiLani Dowell (2006)
A guidebook aimed at young people, covering recruiter tactics, draft history, and resistance strategies. Frequently used by youth organizers and anti-war groups.
Exploring the myths and realities of military service and recruitment, this handbook addresses the controversial tactics used by recruiters as well as the virtual economic draft created by the lack of job training, education, and opportunity for disadvantaged youth. Sexism, racism, economic inequality, and other forms of oppression and exploitation exacerbated by the inequities of military service are addressed, and the final chapter outlines an action plan for organizing, challenging, and shutting down the recruiting machine in local schools. This book is essential reading for youth who may be approached by military recruiters as well as for parents who want their children to make informed choices about military service.
Purchase at: Amazon |
6. Peace Mom: A Mother’s Journey Through Heartache to Activism
Cindy Sheehan (2006)
Not exclusively about counter-recruitment, but Sheehan’s activism helped fuel the 2000s anti-war and counter-recruitment wave. Often cited in movement histories.
On April 4, 2004, Cindy Sheehan learned that Casey, the eldest of her four children, had been killed in Iraq, where he was serving in the United States Army. After struggling through crippling grief for three weeks, she came to an epiphany: "I will spend my life trying to make Casey's sacrifice count for peace and love, not killing and hate."
Peace Mom is the heartfelt and profoundly moving story of Cindy's journey to activism. She recounts the dark days following Casey's death, when it seemed her life would never have meaning again. She tells of her June 2004 meeting with President Bush, and how that encounter ultimately set her on a path that would take her to hearings in the Capitol, test old friendships and family ties, and culminate outside Crawford, Texas, in a month long peace action that would draw thousands of supporters and worldwide attention. Going behind the headlines and sound bites, Cindy writes candidly about the toll her activism has taken on her own life and her family, as well the unforeseen rewards her quest for peace has brought. Through days of rage, despair, laughter, and tears, Cindy has found ways to celebrate the life of her son Casey and give meaning to his death. Her story points the way to a future of peace and justice for the world and for our children.
Purchase at: AbeBooks | Amazon |
📚 Books Adjacent to Counter-Recruitment (Used in Movement Education)
These aren’t manuals, but they’re widely used in workshops, youth education, and anti-militarism trainings.
7. The Things They Carried
Tim O’Brien (1990)
A literary classic that counter-recruiters often recommend to students as a reality-check on the romanticization of war.
A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O’Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywherefrom high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writingit has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing.
Purchase at: Amazon |
8. Johnny Got His Gun
Dalton Trumbo (1939)
A powerful anti-war novel historically used by draft counselors and anti-militarist educators.
This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered—not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives. . . . This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome . . . but so is war.
Purchase at: AbeBooks | Amazon |
9. Other Lands Have Dreams: Letters From Pekin Prison
Kathy Kelly (2005)
Writings from a leading nonviolent activist whose work intersects with anti-recruitment and anti-war organizing.
In the spring of 2004, human rights activist Kathy Kelly, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, was sent to Pekin Federal Prison for leading a protest at the School of the Americas. While in prison, Kelly’s organization, Voices in the Wilderness, was targeted by a US State Department lawsuit charging that Kelly violated US-imposed sanctions when she took humanitarian aid to Iraq during numerous visits over the last five years.
In this fiercely eloquent book, Kelly recounts such trips to Iraq, tells the largely unknown story of the School of the Americas and describes daily life inside a federal prison, where America’s poor are warehoused. Like Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, Kelly’s powerful narrative gives voice to the unheard millions suffering at home and abroad.
Purchase at: Amazon |
📚 Movement-Adjacent Organizing Manuals
These aren’t counter-recruitment-specific, but they’re widely used by groups like NNOMY, WRL, and AFSC:
- Globalize Liberation – David Solnit
- Beautiful Trouble – Andrew Boyd & Dave Oswald Mitchell
- Nonviolence Handbook – Michael Nagler
They offer tactics, framing, and creative direct action strategies that counter-recruitment campaigns often draw from.
Please consider supporting The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth
and our work to demilitarize our schools and youth by sending a check to our fiscal sponsor "in our name" at the
Alliance for Global Justice.
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Revised: 09/26/2025 GDG
