Sunday, March 07, 2010

THE FOREVER WAR by Dexter Filkins


Until I read this book, I'd only had a vague idea about the horrors in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Filkins is a top-notch New York Times journalist who manages to ground each piece in the ordinary, reminiscent of the fiction of Carol Shields.

He doesn't shy away from the honest truth about circumstances in which new normal includes children who run skittishly across minefields because that's the quicker route, the exploded ground-zero flesh of innocent civilians or the puppyish American soldiers who are meant to serve and protect.

I have a better understanding how covering war zones becomes a compulsion and causes irrevocable damages.

This is a brave and shocking book.

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