Wow. Krakauer is such an excellent writer, and he is well-suited to the task of telling of the “Odyssey of Pat Tillman,” the professional football player who walked away from a bright career in the NFL to enlist in the army after 9/11 and subsequently die on an April day in Afghanistan in 2004.
Krakauer writes of Tillman’s life, his beliefs, his honor code and virtues and intersperses it with the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in doing so, he creates a terrific contrast of heroes vs. villains. The hero, in this case, being a soldier on the field of combat, and the villain being the people who sent him there and then covered up the facts of his death to make it little more than good public relations for the war. Tillman is presented as a youthful idealist who came face to face with a conflict that is wrought with lies and distortions, yet he soldiers on until his tragic death as the result of friendly fire.

Tillman is shown in a way that he was not shown before: a principled man who also questioned everything. He is shown as a man who would have bristled at the thought of his life (or death) being used as a tool to advance a political agenda (rallying support for the war); a man who was a leader but also believed in the value of obedience; a man who was no poster boy for war of military misadventures, but was used to this end anyway.
Well-written, and well researched, at first I thought this was a surprising subject choice for the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air. But the more that I read about Tillman, the more it seemed obvious that his “character” was perfectly in line with the other iconoclastic figures from his other books.
This book is essential reading for all fans of Jon Krakauer, and anyone who wants to get a clear (if a little left-leaning) perspective on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a great book about the human toll of war.