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US Mall 1 - The Forever War
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List Price: $25.00
Our Price: $15.66
Your Save: $ 9.34 ( 37% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Knopf
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.70443
EAN: 9780307266392
ISBN: 0307266397
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2008-09-16
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: 2008-09-16
Studio: Knopf
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Readable, balanced, fair and relevant
Comment: Dexter Filkins has produced a compelling account of his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq while employed as a correspondent for the L.A. Times and NY Times between 1998-2006. He writes with an edge, relating the stories and observations of the different cultures of the two countries with vivid imagery and honesty. I learned a good deal about Afghanistan and the Taliban in this book, and was able to frame Mr. Filkins' adventures in Iraq within the context of my own. I found this to be credible, non-political and an accurate glimpse into the war not just from the military POV, but also through the eyes of the various civilians, government types and militiamen he spent so much time with. What you end up is a tour de force and kaleidoscope of multiple perspectives. I wish Dexter had been embedded with our brigade in Southern Baghdad in 2007 so that he could have experienced the progress made during the surge first hand. After reading his book, I feel that he would have told our story well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Powerfully simple
Comment: Written as a series of short passages or vignettes, each addressing a different experience by the author, this book is deeply personal and touching in a way that sets it apart from other books about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I had expected something along the lines of The Assassins' Gate - another outstanding book about Iraq for different reasons - but Filkins' more personal approach is unique. The reader will learn about fierce battles, tense conflicts, heart-wrenching loss, and touching personal gestures, all made that much more credible and powerful by the fact that the author either experienced them first-hand or personally interviewed those who did. By immersing himself in both the Afghan and Iraqi cultures (to a startling degree in the case of the latter), the author is able to give an honest and accurate account of life and death in places so dangerous that it's hard to imagine how he made it out alive. This book is a must-read for anyone trying to understand what has been going on in Afghanistan and Iraq.
All that being said, I do have one qualm with the book: The author tends to skip around in time and often fails to inform the reader when particular events occurred. That makes it difficult to figure out where the story is in time. Although the stories are organized more or less in a loose chronological order, there are enough deviations to make it confusing frequently.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Opens up new views
Comment: I've read quite a few books about the Iraq war, but none of them really cover the same ground as The Forever War. Filkins' role as a journalist allows him access to people and places that are seen through a one-way lens in books written by soldiers, embedded journalists or political analysts.
Filkins also differs from the "competition" in style: The book consists of short tales and impressions gathered over years spent in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are in turn moving, shocking, heart-warming and surreal: A Westerner's comfortable existence doesn't equip you to imagine a world where someone lives by selling the meat of goats that have wandered into minefields and exploded. There is little in the way of analysis or conclusions, but together, the stories paint a picture that is much more vivid than mere combat descriptions or battle plan dissections can convey.
The book made quite an impression on me and definitely ranks up as one of the best yet written about America's present conflicts. I would recommend it to everyone interested in a deeper understanding of what's behind the explosion-filled news stories.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A dangerous life in an American disaster zone
Comment: This is a great book; easy to read and thought provoking. Filkins introduces us to his world; a choatic military disaster in the middle east. Written in short story form, we see the war from one man's perspective. His respect and admiration for the "grunts" and Iraqi/Afgangi victims comes through on every page. Filkins makes no judgements, it's not a political book, we only see the results of the Bush Administrations actions in the years 2002-2006 (the Rumsfeld years). When Filkins left there seemed to be no hope for Iraq. We can only hope and pray that in 2009 that hope has returned.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly Layered Impressions of Afghanistan and Iraq
Comment: The source of THE FOREVER WAR is 561 notebooks that Dexter Filkins filled in a nine year period, when he worked as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in Afghanistan and The New York Times in Iraq. In a section of acknowledgements at the end of his book, Filkins thanks Jonathan Segal, his editor at Knopf, who "helped shape my unwieldy ideas and an even more unwieldy manuscript..." While Filkins is surely being generous, what he and Segal succeed in delivering is a highly layered rendering of Filkins's experiences that both clarifies and conveys the complexity of these failed states. Filkins and Segal, in other words, have managed this mother lode of on-the-scene impressions brilliantly. They have created a book that is highly perceptive, never strident or polemical, and absolutely riveting.
The layering of experience is everywhere in TFW. One quick illustration is Chapter Eight, which focuses on a maternity hospital in Diwaniya that Jerry Bremer visits. This begins with Bremer's advance man, who is a Republican political operative, not an Iraqi expert. Then Bremer exits his Chinook and gives a speech, like a politician campaigning, citing statistics showing that all 200 hospitals in Iraq are open, that the country's health care is improving, and so on. But what Filkins learns from the doctors is that there is no electricity. As a result, the hospital cannot sterilize instruments or warm the incubators and its premature babies are dying. In this and other visits to this hospital, Filkins also finds one employee who hates Saddam more than the American occupation but another who hates the chaos of the occupation more than Saddam. This single short chapter, in other words, shows the effort to manage the story, the reality, and the complex reactions and allegiances of the Iraqis. Throughout, TFW has a very rich narrative.
In TFW, Filkins does many things exceedingly well. But among my favorites is his discussion of the nihilism of the insurgents. In contemplating videos of suicide bombing, he writes:
"The videos made me wonder. What was more important to these guys, the suicide or the murder? You'd think it would be the murder, but I wasn't always so sure; there was a hint of nihilism in everything Al-Qaeda did. At the end of the Palestine-Sheraton video, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia at the time, gave a little speech. He promised victory for the Islamic world and, barring that, annihilation. `If the enemy wins,' Zarqawi promised, `we will burn everything.'" This nihilism is apparent in everything Filkins writes about Al-Qaeda.
Other excellent chapters examine ethic cleansing, IEDs, and the death of Lance Corporal William L. Miller. Highly recommended.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Readable, balanced, fair and relevant
Comment: Dexter Filkins has produced a compelling account of his experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq while employed as a correspondent for the L.A. Times and NY Times between 1998-2006. He writes with an edge, relating the stories and observations of the different cultures of the two countries with vivid imagery and honesty. I learned a good deal about Afghanistan and the Taliban in this book, and was able to frame Mr. Filkins' adventures in Iraq within the context of my own. I found this to be credible, non-political and an accurate glimpse into the war not just from the military POV, but also through the eyes of the various civilians, government types and militiamen he spent so much time with. What you end up is a tour de force and kaleidoscope of multiple perspectives. I wish Dexter had been embedded with our brigade in Southern Baghdad in 2007 so that he could have experienced the progress made during the surge first hand. After reading his book, I feel that he would have told our story well.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Powerfully simple
Comment: Written as a series of short passages or vignettes, each addressing a different experience by the author, this book is deeply personal and touching in a way that sets it apart from other books about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. I had expected something along the lines of The Assassins' Gate - another outstanding book about Iraq for different reasons - but Filkins' more personal approach is unique. The reader will learn about fierce battles, tense conflicts, heart-wrenching loss, and touching personal gestures, all made that much more credible and powerful by the fact that the author either experienced them first-hand or personally interviewed those who did. By immersing himself in both the Afghan and Iraqi cultures (to a startling degree in the case of the latter), the author is able to give an honest and accurate account of life and death in places so dangerous that it's hard to imagine how he made it out alive. This book is a must-read for anyone trying to understand what has been going on in Afghanistan and Iraq.
All that being said, I do have one qualm with the book: The author tends to skip around in time and often fails to inform the reader when particular events occurred. That makes it difficult to figure out where the story is in time. Although the stories are organized more or less in a loose chronological order, there are enough deviations to make it confusing frequently.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Opens up new views
Comment: I've read quite a few books about the Iraq war, but none of them really cover the same ground as The Forever War. Filkins' role as a journalist allows him access to people and places that are seen through a one-way lens in books written by soldiers, embedded journalists or political analysts.
Filkins also differs from the "competition" in style: The book consists of short tales and impressions gathered over years spent in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are in turn moving, shocking, heart-warming and surreal: A Westerner's comfortable existence doesn't equip you to imagine a world where someone lives by selling the meat of goats that have wandered into minefields and exploded. There is little in the way of analysis or conclusions, but together, the stories paint a picture that is much more vivid than mere combat descriptions or battle plan dissections can convey.
The book made quite an impression on me and definitely ranks up as one of the best yet written about America's present conflicts. I would recommend it to everyone interested in a deeper understanding of what's behind the explosion-filled news stories.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A dangerous life in an American disaster zone
Comment: This is a great book; easy to read and thought provoking. Filkins introduces us to his world; a choatic military disaster in the middle east. Written in short story form, we see the war from one man's perspective. His respect and admiration for the "grunts" and Iraqi/Afgangi victims comes through on every page. Filkins makes no judgements, it's not a political book, we only see the results of the Bush Administrations actions in the years 2002-2006 (the Rumsfeld years). When Filkins left there seemed to be no hope for Iraq. We can only hope and pray that in 2009 that hope has returned.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly Layered Impressions of Afghanistan and Iraq
Comment: The source of THE FOREVER WAR is 561 notebooks that Dexter Filkins filled in a nine year period, when he worked as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in Afghanistan and The New York Times in Iraq. In a section of acknowledgements at the end of his book, Filkins thanks Jonathan Segal, his editor at Knopf, who "helped shape my unwieldy ideas and an even more unwieldy manuscript..." While Filkins is surely being generous, what he and Segal succeed in delivering is a highly layered rendering of Filkins's experiences that both clarifies and conveys the complexity of these failed states. Filkins and Segal, in other words, have managed this mother lode of on-the-scene impressions brilliantly. They have created a book that is highly perceptive, never strident or polemical, and absolutely riveting.
The layering of experience is everywhere in TFW. One quick illustration is Chapter Eight, which focuses on a maternity hospital in Diwaniya that Jerry Bremer visits. This begins with Bremer's advance man, who is a Republican political operative, not an Iraqi expert. Then Bremer exits his Chinook and gives a speech, like a politician campaigning, citing statistics showing that all 200 hospitals in Iraq are open, that the country's health care is improving, and so on. But what Filkins learns from the doctors is that there is no electricity. As a result, the hospital cannot sterilize instruments or warm the incubators and its premature babies are dying. In this and other visits to this hospital, Filkins also finds one employee who hates Saddam more than the American occupation but another who hates the chaos of the occupation more than Saddam. This single short chapter, in other words, shows the effort to manage the story, the reality, and the complex reactions and allegiances of the Iraqis. Throughout, TFW has a very rich narrative.
In TFW, Filkins does many things exceedingly well. But among my favorites is his discussion of the nihilism of the insurgents. In contemplating videos of suicide bombing, he writes:
"The videos made me wonder. What was more important to these guys, the suicide or the murder? You'd think it would be the murder, but I wasn't always so sure; there was a hint of nihilism in everything Al-Qaeda did. At the end of the Palestine-Sheraton video, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia at the time, gave a little speech. He promised victory for the Islamic world and, barring that, annihilation. `If the enemy wins,' Zarqawi promised, `we will burn everything.'" This nihilism is apparent in everything Filkins writes about Al-Qaeda.
Other excellent chapters examine ethic cleansing, IEDs, and the death of Lance Corporal William L. Miller. Highly recommended.
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