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Acclaimed New York Times journalist and author Chris Hedges offers a critical -- and fascinating -- lesson in the dangerous realities of our age: a stark look at the effects of war on combatants. Utterly lacking in rhetoric or dogma, this manual relies instead on bare fact, frank description, and a spare question-and-answer format. Hedges allows U.S. military documentation of the brutalizing physical and psychological consequences of combat to speak for itself.

Hedges poses dozens of questions that young soldiers might ask about combat, and then answers them by quoting from medical and psychological studies.

• What are my chances of being wounded or killed if we go to war?

• What does it feel like to get shot?

• What do artillery shells do to you?

• What is the most painful way to get wounded?

• Will I be afraid?

• What could happen to me in a nuclear attack?

• What does it feel like to kill someone?

• Can I withstand torture?

• What are the long-term consequences of combat stress?

• What will happen to my body after I die?

This profound and devastating portrayal of the horrors to which we subject our armed forces stands as a ringing indictment of the glorification of war and the concealment of its barbarity.

Average Customer Rating:

stocking stuffer idea for teenage boys

Customer Rating:

Here we are in Fort America in 2008 with the Iraq War in it's seventh year, the War on Terra still in full swing (of coarse), and with both presidential candidates bending over backwards to ensure the powers that be and the masses that they are more than willing to solve problems with violence and war. The 'candidate of hope' has made clear he will in reality change little and plans to increase our military presence in Afghanistan. The other one frankly isn't worth commenting on. Who knows what new conflicts will emerge in the next few years? Chris Hedges had a good idea with this book "What Every Person Should Know About War". You don't at all have to share my utter contempt and hatred of war to appreciate and benefit from it. I would consider giving this book to a young man in my family or that perhaps you are a mentor to. I think it is especially important for those that are more likely than the rest of us to enter the military and find themselves in combat to have as good of an idea as they can of what hell may be in store for them. War isn't like a movie or video game and while we all kind of know that, including most young people, truth is nothing brings home the point like being faced page after page with cold hard facts.

Publisher's Weekly review gets it wrong

Customer Rating:

The Publishers Weekly review should be reviewed--and deleted for inaccuracy: "He fails to note that depictions of gore, mayhem, psychological trauma and flashbacks have become staples of Hollywood's treatment of war even as such experiences have become less common in America's high-tech, casualty-averse military. Americans, soldiers and civilians both, could use a clear-eyed analysis of modern warfare, but this limited treatment doesn't yet provide one." "Casualty-averse military??" This is simply false as well as disrespectful to the thousands of war dead and injured. The reviewer does a great disservice to Hedges book in making such a moronic claim. As the first reviewer mentions, Hedges tells the truth about war without glossing over or glorifying the effects of war on human beings. Amazon, please do something about the PW review!

The Real ...	Customer Rating:
The Q & A format leaves little room for doubt ... every parent with a teen-age son should read ... digest ... and act accordingly

Reading between the lines...	Customer Rating:
After all of the controversy that has dogged him since his previous book, "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning", war journalist Chris Hedges simply and cleverly lets the statistics speak for themselves. You be the judge. This should be required reading for anyone considering a career in the military. At the very least, you will know exactly what you are getting yourself into.

the driest, most factual short book	Customer Rating:
Its all perfectly correct, impeccably researched, reads like a government report. Contrast it with the similar section in "The Great War and Modern Memory" by Paul Fussell