 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | National Bestseller
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
A New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year
One of the Best Books of the Year:
New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, and Time
An instant classic of war reporting, The Forever War is the definitive account of America's conflict with Islamic fundamentalism and a searing exploration of its human costs. Through the eyes of Filkins, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, we witness the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, the aftermath of the attack on New York on September 11th, and the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Filkins is the only American journalist to have reported on all these events, and his experiences are conveyed in a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters and astonishing scenes.
Brilliant and fearless, The Forever War is not just about America's wars after 9/11, but about the nature of war itself. |
Average Customer Rating:   An Essential Read in These Days and Times I really hadn't heard too much of Dexter Filkins, New York Times correspondent, previous to reading his book, "The Forever War." The book won a "New York Times Book Review" Best Book of the Year award for 2009 which seems to be like a sister calling another sister awesome and voting her prom queen but the writing merits any kind of awards and accolades people or organizations through at it. It's a must read to get the taste and grit of the wars we've been waging in Iraq and Afghanistan these past eight years.
Where journalist have gained no holds bar access to war, not allowed during the Gulf War, we can gain these prose pictures of what war is really like at least from the eyes and mind of Filkins and other like journalist risking kidnapping, beheading, and the dissolution of their families and lives back in the states. As a sign of the times, we each of us in our own way have been effected by 9/11 and the way the war has proceeded thereafter. Filkins sees it first hand in Kabul and Fallujah and leaves the meaty taste of fear and death in our collective conscious through his unique approach to recounting it all. You get this weaving in and out of scenes across the war on terrorism in a near fevered pitch dream sequence, giving you a greater sense of being there along with Filkins without having all the bullets and mortars whizzing by your noggin.
Filkins holds onto the any kind of semblance of a normal life in the war zone of Iraq by keeping up a daily jogging routine despite further risking his life to the whims of suicide bombers and itchy trigger marines and Iraqi's. The Iraqi's are shocked by his naked legs and wish they were covered in the worst possible cultural clash way. To Filkin's credit he tries to wear the soccer sweat pants they give him but it becomes like working out in a sauna with a plastic sweat suit uncomfortable and heat stroke inducing. I think to other cultures the fact that Americans or westerners try is something.
What I like so much about Filkins' war reporting is that he manages to see the war from all angles to include a windowed observation on Al Qaeda and insurgent clerics and operatives and does so without judging or taking sides. It is only through this level of subjectivity that we are able to gain a more measured feel of what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. There's a chapter title "Communiques" which is more of a quoting of facts and an exercise in listing than a written prose chapter and it is the perfect compliment to Filkins' sparse and observer writing. It list all of 103 insurgenet groups responsible for attacks on Americans from May to October 2005 in a time when there were about the same number of attacks per day on Americans. And it that unconventional telling of war, we get a sense of how the unconventional nature of the Iraqi resistance is so fractured and splintered like a many headed hydra. How does one develop strategy against that?
You are going to have to pick up this little read for yourself to get the full benefit from an engaging and frightening tale of the times. Times that many American youth are cutting their teeth against in the proving ground of Afghanistan's stark and beautiful elevations and tortured valleys. Read to the end as you'll not only get personal stories of how war has affected people and families. One of the more powerful tales is of the Texan from Pearland who loses his life in Fallujah helping to secure a war photo in the midst of the violence and chaos. Filkins follows the story not just with the young man dying in Iraq but goes all the way back to the states to meet the family and remaining survivors following the war loss full circle.
And he ends with this in the acknowledgements, "I fared better than many of the people I wrote about in this book; yet even so, over the course of the events depicted here, I lost the person I cared for the most. The war didn't get her, it got me." And so it coda's out a tale you won't want to miss and find it hard to look away from, a personal loss of what matters most. Filkins says that war flattens one's senses out in the aftermath so nothing seems so impactful as they were in the war zone. Gone is the thrilling highs and adrenaline rush and gone too but lingering is the fear of life and death. I suppose we are forever altered no matter your proximity to the war front by violence engaged upon by one society and culture to another. Forever changed. Forever war. --mmw A sad lesson for me I respect the U.S. military and all they represent, but this book gave me a good idea of why our troops in Iraq have so little hope of success. With little understanding of an ancient people, we come in with our tanks and our guns and offer fuel to the fundamentalists' fire. At one points Mr. Filkins describes this shiny new fire station that the Americans had built in Iraq. It probably cost millions. He talks about how the Iraqis working there seemed proud of their new trucks and uniforms. It must have taken quite a while to build. The insurgents blew it up in a matter of minutes. Millions of dollars reduced to a pile of rubble. The real losers in this story are the Iraqi people. It seems that there are plenty of people in Iraq that just want to work, have a place to live, send their children to school...etc. They live in a violent, terrifying place that most Americans could never even imagine. I can't see how there any way to adequately prepare our troops for what they will be facing in Iraq. Reading this book made me thank God that I live here. It was truly an eye-opening read.
A Forever War Indeed This is Michael Herr's 'Dispatches' for the Iraq/Afghanistan era. You read it and wonder if Filkins intentionally patterned his book after this iconic (and I think somewhat better) one. His use of short, disconnected passages makes for a hallucinogenic reading experience that is certainly visceral if not completely satisfying. After reading this book, I believe that 1) it's amazing Filkins is still alive and 2) it was beyond foolish to take the kind of risks he and other reporters did, since they occasionally exposed not only themselves (their choice) but the military personnel around them to unnecessary danger. In one case, a marine was killed because Filkin's photographer "needed" a shot of an insurgent's corpse, and the soldier was good enough to play escort, putting himself at the head of the line. Thanks to Filkins, I now understand that we have to get entirely out of Iraq. Afghanistan, too. We're creating insurgents faster than we can kill them, creating exactly the "forever war" he describes. This insight, I think, is Filkins real contribution. Keeping it simple One reporter's experience. One observer's, one man's. Snapshots and musings captured in exceptional prose. Brilliant in its pacing and, more often than not, utterly engrossing. Unforgettable This is one of the toughest books I have ever read. It has nothing to do with the writing style but with the subject matter. I had to force myself to finish it so I can see how much this "Forever War" has affected the writer as it is a gritty but engrossing narration by one of the best journalists out there.
Dexter Filkins is a journalist in every sense of the word. He is not writing his opinions on the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but he is narrating stories from both sides of the fences. He encounters so many close calls that it would be easy for him to become jaded, but he managed to keep the spirit of humanity alive in every word of this book.
What one might think this is a cut and dry book on war, that we Americans are the victors and the Iraqi people are the victims of Saddam are in for a surprise when they read this book. It is not a cut and dry book. It is a book full of stories of what it is like to be at war. It is a quagmire of confusing loyalties and miscommunications and sometimes, good intentions turned awry after awhile. There is nothing cut and dry about this book ... war is confusing and hard and Filkins carries the reader through every instances with crisp narration. What makes it so hard is that one senses the empathy Filkins has for every person he had talked with. Their stories are vivid on the pages and once the reader has read them, he/she will be haunted for a long time. The stories are not easily forgotten. They're not meant to be forgotten. They are meant to be shared to remind us that yes, indeed, war is hell.
This is a must-read for all history students, whatever your politics may be. This book is a collection of stories of our military men and women who are over there in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the stories of the Iraqis and of the Taliban. Ordinary men and women are caught up in the times ... and sometimes, their stories become extraordinary in Delkins' book.
10/16/09 |  |
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