false 48470136 307208 2517439 0307266397 9780307266392 280 <![CDATA[The Forever War]]> http://www.goodreads.com/images/books/25/439/2517439-m-1255918999.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/books/25/439/2517439-s-1255918999.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2517439.The_Forever_War 4.41 830
Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, the prizewinning New York Times correspondent whose work was hailed by David Halberstam as “reporting of the highest quality imaginable,” we witness the remarkable chain of events that began with the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, continued with the attacks of 9/11, and moved on to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Filkins’s narrative moves across a vast and various landscape of amazing characters and astonishing scenes: deserts, mountains, and streets of carnage; a public amputation performed by Taliban; children frolicking in minefields; skies streaked white by the contrails of B-52s; a night’s sleep in the rubble of Ground Zero.

We embark on a foot patrol through the shadowy streets of Ramadi, venture into a torture chamber run by Saddam Hussein. We go into the homes of suicide bombers and into street-to-street fighting with a battalion of marines. We meet Iraqi insurgents, an American captain who loses a quarter of his men in eight days, and a young soldier from Georgia on a rooftop at midnight reminiscing about his girlfriend back home. A car bomb explodes, bullets fly, and a mother cradles her blinded son.

Like no other book, The Forever War allows us a visceral understanding of today’s battlefields and of the experiences of the people on the ground, warriors and innocents alike. It is a brilliant, fearless work, not just about America’s wars after 9/11, but ultimately about the nature of war itself.]]> 1088758 4.41 886 306 2008 War is hell. 0 2009-03-11T11:41:45-07:00 490646 342 2009-03-11T11:41:45-07:00 0 2009-03-10T06:24:29-07:00 484465 215 2009-03-10T06:24:29-07:00 0 2009-03-09T06:23:06-07:00 479913 55 2009-03-09T06:23:06-07:00 5 9 false Tue Mar 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 06 19:08:13 -0800 2009 Wed Jun 17 07:27:43 -0700 2009
I should probably confess right away that I'm not a fan of journalism. I resent the whole idea of getting info...more...]]>