If you saw and enjoyed the compelling TV series Generation Kill, then I think you will love this book. There are many outrageous claims made for the book on the back of the proof copy I read and, I have to say, they all stand up. This is classic literature that will stand the test of time; classic in the sense that it joins a long list of stories about the damage done to young men by a foreign war and the difficulties they face in re-adapting to their homeland. It is also a damning, lacerating dissection of a certain facet of United States society - of those people who are well content to talk the talk of war but are happily oblivious of the cost. The story is also consistently funny - bitingly so - and all the more heartbreaking for that.
It bears comparison with Slaughterhouse 5, Catch 22, the movie Coming Home, All Quiet on the Western Front, the poems of Wilfred Owen, the Regeneration trilogy, A Farewell to Arms, Johnny Got His Gun - it really is as good as that.