The Broken Guitar by Richard Greene is a collection of poems about war: Memorial Reading the name of a young man who died in war saddens us. Yet more the names of thousands engraved in granite, or marble, their parents' hopes and dreams interred in stone. All that remains are a few keepsakes, and memories of newborns, toddlers, vulnerable boys, youths becoming men, those now sad memories, and names carved in cold stone. Who wanted those wars? Their leaders of course, but all too often those same young men, and all too often those who mourn for them.

Richard Greene is a poet, or has been at least since he retired from a 38-year career in international development. A lawyer by training, he fell into his development career by accident when, after law school, though planning not to practice law but interested in international affairs, he accepted an unsolicited job offer from the U.S. Agency for International Development. After a few years in Washington (or Foggy Bottom, as the location of the U.S. foreign policy establishment is known), he was assigned as legal advisor to the USAID mission in Laos and there discovered that the development business suited his interests and inclinations very well. Greene wrote poetry beginning in the 8th grade and continued through college where he studied with a Professor, Henry Rago, who later became editor of Poetry magazine, the leading U.S. poetry journal. However, he wrote few poems after law school as he became absorbed in international development, but turned back to poetry as he neared retirement.

Memorial Day, Victoriana, A Century's Wars, A Gentler Time, The Charms of War, The Broken Guitar, Your Grandfather's War, When the British Sank the Tirpitz, The Last Veteran, September 1 1939, December 7 1941, A Boy's War, In Memory of, The Veterans, I Was a Soldier Once, Citizen Soldier, Vor der Kaserne, Aftermath, Roll Call, Remembering Vientiane, Lahore, Angkor, Martyrs: Afghanistan, Boots on the Ground, Forward to the Past, The Things They Carry, Where Have All the Young Men Gone?, All the Brave Men, Memorial, The Unnamed Dead, Numbers Don't Speak, The Grenade, The Weapons Economy, The Great and the Good, To Those without Whom We Couldn't Win