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Loading... The Forever Warby Dexter Filkins
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Winner of the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Awardhttp://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/2008_nonfiction_finalist_the_forever_war_by_dexter_filkins/   catalogthis | Nov 24, 2009 |  The author had a great deal of experience reporting from Afghanistan and Irag and gives detailed insight into the local situation during his time in each war arena. A more personal account of the actual participants then can be gleaned from news accounts. (  ) kmmt48 | Nov 9, 2009 | 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 | 
 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.
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 Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:44:44 -0500) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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