Must Read Book – “War”
This is an amazing book and I highly recommend everyone read it, the book is called War by Sebastian Junger.
It is a must read because:
1. You come away with the clearest understanding possible of what it means to be a soldier in their own words. A bit of a cliche maybe, but you realize what soldiers go through for “us” in the worst possible place in Afghanistan. And you get to follow them home, off the front, and see what it’s like to adapt to normal society after being put at the fringes by that society.
2. It is one of the most brilliantly written accounts of war I’ve encountered. The author has amazing way to place you right in the middle of everything and he writes like a video camera.
3. And finally, you get to see from ground level what it is like in Afghanistan, which we have been fighting in for almost 10 years. And we will probably be there for a lot longer… So important to read and understand what modern warfare has turned into, why it costs so much, and what tactics it takes to win in a place Alexander the Great got stuck in.
Here is the official description:
Junger spent 14 months in 2007–2008 intermittently embedded with a platoon of the 173rd Airborne brigade in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, one of the bloodiest corners of the conflict. The soldiers are a scruffy, warped lot, with unkempt uniforms—they sometimes do battle in shorts and flip-flops—and a ritual of administering friendly beatings to new arrivals, but Junger finds them to be superlative soldiers. Junger experiences everything they do—nerve-racking patrols, terrifying roadside bombings and ambushes, stultifying weeks in camp when they long for a firefight to relieve the tedium. Despite the stress and the grief when buddies die, the author finds war to be something of an exalted state: soldiers experience an almost sexual thrill in the excitement of a firefight—a response Junger struggles to understand—and a profound sense of commitment to subordinating their self-interests to the good of the unit. Junger mixes visceral combat scenes—raptly aware of his own fear and exhaustion—with quieter reportage and insightful discussions of the physiology, social psychology, and even genetics of soldiering. The result is an unforgettable portrait of men under fire.
i’m about to read this, justin just finished it. it was hyped on the daily show so i grabbed it at walmart. :)