Hawken Grad Who Sat at Vanguard of Iraq Invasion Visits

In March 2003, Evan Wright `83 was on the front lines of the Iraqi invasion as one of the first Americans to enter the country with the First Reconnaissance Batallion of the Marine Corps. Only, he was there not as a troop, but as a journalist who`d negotiated a bigger contract at Rolling Stone by convincing the magazine`s editors that if the U.S. decided to invade Iraq (a long shot by his estimation), he`d be there to cover it. What came of his two months embedded with First Recon was the award-winning three-part Rolling Stone series, \"The Killer Elite,\" the basis for his book \"Generation Kill,\" and the upcoming HBO mini-series of the same name. Wright visited the Upper School recently to highlight not only his once-in-a-lifetime experience with the Marines, but also to chronicle his journey from being the student, who struggled academically at Hawken to being the college student, who was motivated to study Italian medieval history by a short-lived high school romance, to being a widely acclaimed author. Click here to listen to his speech during the Upper School assembly