Matt Young joined the Marine Corps at age 18 after a drunken night culminating in wrapping his car around a fire hydrant. The teenage wasteland he fled followed him to the training bases charged with making him a Marine. Matt survived the training, and then not one, not two, but three deployments to Iraq, where the testosterone, danger and stakes for him and his fellow grunts were dialed up a dozen decibels. EAT THE APPLE drops us unarmed into Marine Corps culture and lays bare the absurdism of 21st-century war, the manned-up vulnerability of those on the front lines, and the true, if often misguided, motivations that drove a young man to a life at war.