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9th out of 100 books
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127 voters
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The Good Soldiers
by
David Finkel
It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. He called it the surge. “Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences,” he told a skeptical nation. Among those listening were the young, optimistic army inf
...moreHardcover, 287 pages
Published
September 15th 2009
by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
(first published February 29th 2000)
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This is a great book, a horror story which needed telling and a book which could actually change people’s minds.
It must be said that The Good Soldiers is mainly about men being maimed and killed. The good soldiers from America drive slowly through some of the worst parts of Baghdad and of course they are very frequently blown up. David Finkel reports the story of one army unit between January 2007 and April 2008, when the author was with them. In those few months, 14 died. A lot of ...more
It must be said that The Good Soldiers is mainly about men being maimed and killed. The good soldiers from America drive slowly through some of the worst parts of Baghdad and of course they are very frequently blown up. David Finkel reports the story of one army unit between January 2007 and April 2008, when the author was with them. In those few months, 14 died. A lot of ...more
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Some of you may remember the book Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green where I started a blog comment war with a friend of the author. I just couldn't stand the attitude of the writer and didn't believe that it was a true memoir. I just didn't think that the war in Afghanistan was really what he said. So I wasn't looking forward to reading this novel by a Pulitzer Prize winning author, because I figured it would be another liberal take on why war is bad.
But, oh, I was wrong. This is one of...more
But, oh, I was wrong. This is one of...more
Lori
rated it
Recommends it for:
everybody, but especially Bush, Cheney, Obama, Biden, Gates & everybody at the Pentagon right now
A sad book, but very powerful. An astounding piece of journalism that reads like the finest fiction. Everybody, but especially those people who make decisions about the war - any war - should read it.
I would also like to recommend it to all the students who were in my interactive design class, or were taking classes in my program between the spring of 2007 and the spring of 2008. Why? Here's the answer . (It's my extensive review of the book, but I feel this isn't the right place fo...more
I would also like to recommend it to all the students who were in my interactive design class, or were taking classes in my program between the spring of 2007 and the spring of 2008. Why? Here's the answer . (It's my extensive review of the book, but I feel this isn't the right place fo...more
It is one thing to realize that you have turned into your mother, it is quite another to turn into your dad. I remember a teenage point in my life where I counted all the 'military' books in our house, I was trying to prove a point that we were not like 'normal' families, most 14 year olds do not read Colin powell's biography. my dad was brainwashing me...
Okay, so my point is that this book is astonishing, I can not believe that I am just now reading it. the author takes a genuine in...more
Okay, so my point is that this book is astonishing, I can not believe that I am just now reading it. the author takes a genuine in...more
Powerfully written--to the point of sometimes numbing while engendering a growing sense of pervasive helplessness--this is an account in the tradition and style of Tom Wolfe's "New Journalism" (well, that's what it reminds me of). The author, a Pulitzer Prize winner for earlier work on U.S. support efforts in Yemen, here takes on the considerable task of conveying what the war experience was like during the Surge in Iraq for Battalion 2-16, a group of infrantrymen known as the Rangers...more
Will
rated it
Up close and personal, The Good Soldiers is a brutal, bloody, real portrait of contemporary war, complete with excrement-filled trenches, good intentions, too many severed human parts, and some questionable leadership. It is as disturbing as it is informative.
What did the surge in Iraq look like from the inside? How do you get the locals to trust you? How do you patrol an area when your vehicles are constantly being blown up by IEDs and other deadly devices? How do you sustain an op...more
What did the surge in Iraq look like from the inside? How do you get the locals to trust you? How do you patrol an area when your vehicles are constantly being blown up by IEDs and other deadly devices? How do you sustain an op...more
What a powerful book. Almost every description and detail is emotionally moving in some way, and there are some that are so, so tragic. I had to take breaks to process what I was reading. David Finkel's writing is excellent and well crafted. With humility and respect for his subjects, Finkel lets the unbelievable details, language of the soldiers, and the perspective and thoughts of Ralph Kauzlarich speak for themselves. There is so much human suffering and human dignity in this book.
I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Do you ever read a book and think that, while you didn't exactly enjoy it, it was important that you read it? That's the feeling I come away with after "The Good Soldiers".
The author's approach disoriented me. His writing is pretty florid, which contrasts oddly with the grit and hard facts of the surge. It feels like there's a lot of artistic license at play in a place where less would be more. After the first death in Iraq, there's th...more
The author's approach disoriented me. His writing is pretty florid, which contrasts oddly with the grit and hard facts of the surge. It feels like there's a lot of artistic license at play in a place where less would be more. After the first death in Iraq, there's th...more
Finkel is a NY Times reporter who spent 8 months with an Army Ranger brigade in East Baghdad in 2008 - during the GW Bush surge. He is a terrific writer. Not a flowery writer, and no space-filling paragraphs. It reads like you are there hearing and watching the soldiers. You sense their bravado in the beginning, their growing distrust of Iraq folks, their huge and growing fear as time goes by of hidden explosive devices, and their coming to grips with friends dying, losing legs, and so forth. M...more
When I bought this book the lady at the register told me, "You're the first woman to ever buy this book!" Unfortunately no special prize comes with that. But I highly recommend this book to peoples of all genders. I've tried to read several books about the Afghanistan/Iraq wars, but I was never very interested in the long backstory and all the laborious details about politics and behind-doors meetings and whatnot. This book ignores all of that and takes the reader directly to the s...more
This is a very sad book and written in an unusual way. It's not so much a story - with your typical arc and characters - as a series of journal entries. Because of that, there is something a bit more raw and powerful to the writing. It took me a few chapters to get used to but once I did I admired that Finkel didn't try to do too much with this book or the material. He, of course, writes mostly about the bad days, which make for a more interesting read and have more of an impact on soldiers but ...more
As much as I liked this book, I hated it, too. You see, my husband was in the same brigade as 2-16. He was not at FOB Rusty, but at another FOB as part of the surge. We haven't talked much about what he saw during his two deployments. He isn't an infantryman, never has had to patrol, etc. However, he had to go outside the wire, as any and all soldiers are wont to do. Until this book, I could never imagine what that entailed.
My heart breaks for the soldiers of 2-16. The ones ...more
My heart breaks for the soldiers of 2-16. The ones ...more
The Good Soldiers is about the micro, not the macro, nor about strategy, politics, or protestors. It's focus is on the day to day experiences of a battalian of troops during the '07 Iraq surge and it gives updated meaning to Sherman's quote that "war is hell." The descriptions of patrols taken on humvees leave a reader tensed for the moment of an IED explosion and when they occur the intensity quickly morphs into horror and disgust as images of injury and suffering fly off the page. Th...more
I really hate reading about war. I find it nauseating, and I find the whole process of combat stupid.
That said - if I had to read a book about the Iraq war, I'm glad it was this one.
I was blown away by the author's organization. Although the story is told chronologically, it tells the stories of dozens of different soldiers yet remains very organic in how those histories are told.
There are definitely some sections that one should not read while eating, befor...more
That said - if I had to read a book about the Iraq war, I'm glad it was this one.
I was blown away by the author's organization. Although the story is told chronologically, it tells the stories of dozens of different soldiers yet remains very organic in how those histories are told.
There are definitely some sections that one should not read while eating, befor...more
Although the writing on the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan has been solid—Doug Stanton's recent Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan (2009), Thomas Ricks's Fiasco (**** Nov/Dec 2006), and Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City (**** Selection Jan/Feb 2007) come to mind—David Finkel's unflinching reporting brings an immediacy to the war experience that critics welcomed as necessary (despite more than a few uncomf...more
He pulled a piece of copper shrapnel out from the webbing of his fingers. He wore a short sleeve shirt to show off the zigzag scars along his arms. He popped a fake eye made to look like the crosshairs of a rifle scope into his hollow eye socket. He said, “I want people to know the price of war” (210).
This is just one of the wounded soldiers David Finkel writes about in his brutal but compelling book The Good Soldiers. The book chronicles the troops of the 2-16, one of the battalion...more
This is just one of the wounded soldiers David Finkel writes about in his brutal but compelling book The Good Soldiers. The book chronicles the troops of the 2-16, one of the battalion...more
Dear Goodreads Web Designer:
Your star rating system needs a new button. Perhaps completely off the scale, a little red x labeled "fucking painful, read it anyway." Or something along those lines.
Sincerely, Kate
I didn't like this book. I don't think anyone could like such a bloody first hand look at an army regiment in Baghdad during the Surge. This is a very painful account, which makes me credit and also dislike it. Because any non-sociopath ...more
Your star rating system needs a new button. Perhaps completely off the scale, a little red x labeled "fucking painful, read it anyway." Or something along those lines.
Sincerely, Kate
I didn't like this book. I don't think anyone could like such a bloody first hand look at an army regiment in Baghdad during the Surge. This is a very painful account, which makes me credit and also dislike it. Because any non-sociopath ...more
My son was in this battalion and is an admirer of the battalion commander, "Col K" as everyone calls him. I had heard many of the stories in this book but not in their totality. David Finkel has written an intense, compelling, and emotional account that succeeds in covering the war on so many facets simultaneously: strategic, operational, tactical, homefront, and the Iraqi perspective as well. A map would have been nice but this was not an account written to stop and reference maps, bu...more
A clear-eyed view of soldiers' experience of Iraq. Finkel spent several months with a battalion in Iraq charged with carrying out the Bush Administration's "surge." Their stories - of individual soldiers, and of the battalion as a whole - illuminate the schism between policy-making and implementation, at the same time providing an unusually intimate and honest view into personal experiences of This War. Finkel does not get in the way of the stories he has to tell; while present, his...more
THE GOOD SOLDIERS reconciled two convictions that sometimes seem as dissonant as war and peace: I'm against the war in Iraq and I support our troops. "And." Not "but."
If you are age 18-42, if you appreciate 4th of July fireworks, if you're a father or a daughter, if you've ever celebrated a birthday far from home, if you've ever wondered if you could cut it in the U.S. military, if you watch the news, if the news bores you, if the news frightens you, please re...more
If you are age 18-42, if you appreciate 4th of July fireworks, if you're a father or a daughter, if you've ever celebrated a birthday far from home, if you've ever wondered if you could cut it in the U.S. military, if you watch the news, if the news bores you, if the news frightens you, please re...more
This is one of the worst books that I have ever read. If I could give it a half a star I would. I would not recommend this to anyone. The whole time I was reading this book I was thinking that there had to be some point to it besides the writer attempting to show that war is pointless, that America is a failure and that life sucks, but thats essentially the point of the whole book as far as I can tell.
The writer paints such a grim and hopeless picture that I felt like I was either going to ...more
The writer paints such a grim and hopeless picture that I felt like I was either going to ...more
The Good Soldiers, David Finkel’s 2009 account of the 2-16’s eighteen months in eastern Baghdad, provides a profound meditation on the multifaceted reality of war and its costs. Finkel outlines four distinct realities of the war in Iraq: conversations and meetings with Iraqi civilians; uneasy coordination between the US, Iraqi military, and national police; firefights, IEDs, or EFPs; and politics or PR. He also acknowledges that for wives, girlfriends, and family members there is yet a fifth w...more
Dit verhaal is een verslag van een Eenheid van het Amerikaanse leger, de 2nd bataljon van de 16th Infantry Regiment, Rangers uit Fort Riley Kansas onder bevel van Luitenant-colonel Kauzlarich die op een dag in 2007 worden uitgezonden naar Irak. In tegenstelling tot wat ze gedacht hadden worden ze niet ingezet voor de beveiliging van transportkonvooien in Zuid-Irak maar worden ze ingezet in Rustamiyah een van de meest onrustige buitenwijken van Bagdad, Irak. Ze maken deel uit van de troepenverst...more
I enjoy reading books on WWII history, and I haven't read much about other wars. Someone had recommended this book on the Iraq War, so I decided to give it a shot.
All I can say after reading it is, "WOW." The danger and threats the 2-16 battalion experienced every day during their tour was mind-boggling. It really makes you appreciate the sacrifices that American soldiers make in a war zone. I couldn't sleep the first night because I laid there and thanked God that I wa...more
All I can say after reading it is, "WOW." The danger and threats the 2-16 battalion experienced every day during their tour was mind-boggling. It really makes you appreciate the sacrifices that American soldiers make in a war zone. I couldn't sleep the first night because I laid there and thanked God that I wa...more
Harrowing. Riveting. Unbelievably sad. David Finkel's all-access, on the ground reporting from the Iraqi War during "the surge" of 2007 into 2008 does a fantastic job of putting us with the 2-16 Infantry Battalion with which he was embedded, as they try to makes sense of a increasingly senseless situation, and get out of there, not just alive, not just without losing a hand, or a leg, or, in the case of one guy, both legs, one arm, one hand, ears, and eyelids, but with a measure of dig...more
Each year, my daughter's university chooses a theme for the freshman writing seminar and assigns a reading to go along with the theme. I like to read the books also as the selections tend to be outside my normal choices and they broaden my knowledge and thinking on the topic. The Good Soldiers was the book chosen this year. I found it to a description of the war in Iraq that was very painful to listen to. I brought my experiences as a mother to the reading and found it so difficult to read a...more
An interesting portrait of a battalion of Army Rangers on the ground in Baghdad during the so-called surge of 2007-08. Leaving aside the often-ridiculous pronouncements of George W. Bush that appear as a background counterpoint to what the soldiers are actually experiencing in the midst of a supposed victory, we have a unique insight into the thoughts and fears facing these mostly-young men (late teens and early 20's). The Army gave Mr. Finkel largely unsuppressed access to what the unit went th...more
I've driven past Fort Riley, the central Kansas army base, dozens of times during visits to my in-laws near Dodge City and from the Interstate the base always looks eerily empty. But this nonfiction book about Fort Riley infantry soldiers (the ones that serve the really scary way, with their feet on the ground) in Iraq during some of the worst months of "the surge" in 2007-2008 - offers a painfully in-depth look at the struggle these young guys, some teen-agers, go through at war and a...more
How does one describe a war? Was there ever a war that seemed like a success? Oh yes--I remember now. The one Bush,Jr declared finished after a month or two.
Imagine you are lying flat on the hot, dusty surface of a road east of Baghdad, in Rustamiyah. Like an IED, say, or an EFP. (Improvised Explosive Device or Explosively Formed Penetrator) Imagine you take a picture of the world from that viewpoint. I felt Finkel's book allowed us to view the war in Iraq from a similar vantagepoin...more
Imagine you are lying flat on the hot, dusty surface of a road east of Baghdad, in Rustamiyah. Like an IED, say, or an EFP. (Improvised Explosive Device or Explosively Formed Penetrator) Imagine you take a picture of the world from that viewpoint. I felt Finkel's book allowed us to view the war in Iraq from a similar vantagepoin...more
I first heard about this book on This America Life where actors read excerpts from the book. Based on these excerpts I had thought the structure would be similar to “Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam” which I had really liked. I downloaded the audio version and found that it was not written in this fashion at all, but in more of a linear narrative, focusing basically on one main character, Colonel Ralph Kauzlarich.
The narrative follows one battalion, the 2-16, during the s...more
The narrative follows one battalion, the 2-16, during the s...more
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David Finkel is a staff writer for The Washington Post, and is also the leader of the Post’s national reporting team. He won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2006 for a series of stories about U.S.-funded democracy efforts in Yemen. Finkel lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and two daughters. Email him at davidfinkel@thegoodsoldiers.com.
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