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The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
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The Forever War

by Dexter Filkins

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4021912,484 (4.11)19
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Showing 1-5 of 19 (next | show all)
Magnificent, chilling, and compelling war reporting. Still working my way through, but immensely impressive.

Some days I thought we had broken into a mental institution. One of the old ones, from the nineteenth century, where people were dumped and forgotten. It was like we had pried the doors off and found all these people clutching themselves and burying their heads in the corners and sitting in their own filth. It was useful to think of Iraq this way. It helped your analysis. Murder and torture and sadism: it was part of Iraq. It was in people's brains. ( )
  ben_a | Oct 17, 2009 |
If you read only one book about Afghanistan and Iraq this is it. The rare non-fiction that"ll make you want to cry. Strongly recommend. ( )
  norinrad10 | Oct 10, 2009 |
New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins war memoirs from 1997 to 2005, mostly covering the period 2002-2005 in Iraq. Much of it previously published so I experienced deja-vu re-reading passages I remembered from years ago in the Times. Obviously much of it is unforgettable, it has become a vital part of my own experience of the war, as if I was there before and was re-reading an account of what I witnessed, which speaks to the power of the writing and events.

I recommend Filkins's hour long presentation at Google Talks, given just a few weeks after he returned from Iraq, it's what inspired me to read the book. ( )
  Stbalbach | Sep 20, 2009 |
Outstanding and compelling. Also hard to read. Action takes place before the surge. Cold comfort but a book like this can quickly be dated by events.

Saw Filkins do a piece for the Newshour on PBS. Seemed unprepared and a bit unprofessional. ( )
  Smiley | Aug 23, 2009 |
First hand account of life in Iraq during the insurgency. Grim book in its implications--the title says it all. The book captures the craziness of Iraq and the bravery (foolishness) of the soldiers/reporters. One lapses into the other repeatedly. To say there is a cultural disconnect is to understate the situation. ( )
  cdeuker | Aug 2, 2009 |
Showing 1-5 of 19 (next | show all)
New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins has written a gripping book, rich in vivid vignettes of courage, chaos, service, depravity, and death. . . . Filkins highlights the murderousness of the Taliban, of the Baathists, of the jihadist terrorists who think of themselves as "forever" at war with the infidels.
 
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Series (with order)
Canonical Title
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Awards and honors
Epigraph
He thought that in the beauty of the world hid a secret. He thought the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.
-Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from which not the mightiest whale is free.

-Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Dedication
To Khalid Hassan and Fakher Haider, friends and colleague who were killed while looking for the truth, and Lance Corporal William L. Miller, who went first.
First words
The marines were pressed flat on a rooftop when the dialogue began to unfold.
Quotations
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Canonical titleThe Forever War
Original publication date2008
Important placesIraq, Pakistan
Important eventsWar on Terrorism, Iraq War
Awards and honorsLos Angeles Times Book Prize finalist (Current Interest, 2008), New York Times Notable Book of the Year (Nonfiction, 2008), New York Times bestseller (Nonfiction, 2008), National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction, 2008), Colby Award (2009), Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year (2008.20|Non-fiction (1), 2008)
EpigraphHe thought that in the beauty of the world hid a secret. He thought the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong d... (show all)
DedicationTo Khalid Hassan and Fakher Haider, friends and colleague who were killed while looking for the truth, and Lance Corporal William L. Miller, who went first.
First wordsThe marines were pressed flat on a rooftop when the dialogue began to unfold.
Book description

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0307266397, Hardcover)

From the front lines of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, a searing, unforgettable book that captures the human essence of the greatest conflict of our time.

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.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400)

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