The writers for the Museum of American Military Families (MAMF) have produced yet another volume in the series of military memoirs, Host Nation Hospitality. This latest book focuses, in their own words, on the experiences abroad of American military families. We leave the greater sociological examination of a post-WW2 worldwide diaspora of military forces to other writers and instead tell the everyday stories of our lives outside the US, going not always where we would have chosen, but, as always, where our fathers, mothers, or spouses were needed.

In the line of books produced by the Museum, the focus is exclusively on the experiences of people affiliated with the American military, but experiences that don’t often get much airplay. In this book, the memoir stories come from around the world remembered by American military family members and by servicemembers themselves. The stories come from all the continents except Antarctica. They come from writers who were children or young adults during World War Two, through the Cold War and Vietnam, through the drawdown years after the Cold War, through the two decades in east Asia, and on up to writers from the present day. The stories range from the comical, to the poignant, to the disastrous. They are the stories of our lives.