David Danelo, a Senior Fellow in FPRI’s Program on National Security, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and served seven years as an infantry officer in the Marine Corps. In 2004, then-Captain Danelo served near Fallujah with the First Marine Expeditionary Force as a convoy commander, intelligence officer and provisional executive officer for a rifle company. Danelo’s first book, Blood Stripes: The Grunt's View of the War in Iraq (Stackpole:2006), was awarded the 2006 Silver Medal (Military History) by the Military Writers Society of America. His book, The Border: Exploring the US-Mexican Divide (2008), was endorsed by The Economist, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, and Texas Books in Review, which called it “an unequivocally compelling read.”