James Stockdale was a United States Navy vice admiral. He is one of the most decorated naval officers, awarded the Medal of Honor in the Vietnam War where he was a prisoner of war for over seven years. In the late 1970s, he served as President of the Naval War College. Stockdale was a candidate for Vice President of the United States in the 1992 presidential election on Ross Perot's independent ticket.
The decade that followed James Stockdale's seven and a half years in a North Vietnamese prison saw his life take a number of different turns, from a stay in a navy hospital to president of a civilian college to his appointment as a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution. In these essays he offers his thoughts on his imprisonment.