May 2025
A Walk Among Heroes: Searching for America’s Better Angels is a military history of the people and patriots who came to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. It explores the contributions, lives, and achievements of some of the nation’s most diverse (and too often unsung) heroes, from military leaders to NASA crewmembers.
Each of these profiles features a revised examination of heroic action and countenance that encourages readers to think beyond individual action to the events that forced them to make lasting marks on their worlds.
Photographer Gary B. Zelinski considers his initial perception of Arlington’s history in light of his own participation in the military. He’d initially planned a picture book of gravesite images, but as his work unfolded, he embraced the bigger picture of these lives and how they came to rest at Arlington.
His book embraces this history with chapters and photographs powered by the many memorials and gravesites scattered over the cemetery’s 639 acres. It must have been a real challenge to synthesize and condense the best into this volume, but Zelinski’s hard-hitting document preserves facts and ultimately thanks each and every hero for their service.
A Walk Among Heroes will reach a wide audience, from those interested in photographic history pursuits to readers of military history, cemetery history, and heroic actions that changed the past and influenced the future.
Libraries seeking a visual and written slice of life about Arlington’s many heroes will relish these lively insights into struggles, battles, and ultimate meaning that make Arlington of continuing relevance and importance today.
Compelling life stories and visual emphasis weave perfectly into a hard-hitting memoir that fills in many gaps about the nature, purposes, and actions of heroes in American society and history.
A Walk Among Heroes concludes with an invitation for future generations to consider Arlington a resting place of not dead, but living history:
If you live near our nation’s capital or plan to visit, I encourage you to tour Arlington National Cemetery. Spend some time walking to distant gravesites and get to know the heroes buried there. Learn their life stories by traveling to their hometowns. Learn how they lived and whom they loved. Find your own better America. If you do, you will see the very best of our nation, where every stone tells a story.
D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review.