On occasion, I like to reread my grandfather's letters. While leafing through them, I'm saddened by what is being lost in modern communication. Soul-baring sentimentality isn't typically poured into text messages, tweets and emails. All too often, personal connections are brushed aside for the sake of convenience in a fast-paced world.

Letters From Home' is a story inspired by my grandparents' epistolary courtship.

Several years ago, I was creating a Christmas present for the family, a self-published cookbook featuring recipes my grandmother had collected and created over decades. While interviewing her for the biographical section, she began to talk about her courtship with my late grandfather.

Letters From Home' is a 90,000-word WWII love story with a twist, aptly summarized as 'The Notebook' meets 'Saving Private Ryan.'

I know of no greater work for humanity than in the cause of peace, which can only be achieved by the earnest efforts of nations and peoples.

Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka.

Americans who have parents raised during the Great Depression or World War II understand how drastically things have changed on the home front. My father did not care a whit whether I liked him, and it would have been unthinkable for him to pick up my stuff. There were rules in the house, and they were enforced.

When you walk through the hospital, you waiver between feeling bad for everyone else and feeling bad for yourself. It's a war of the worlds - the healthy and the sick.