http://www.booktv.org/schedule.aspx The Forever War
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Author: Dexter Filkins
Upcoming Schedule
Saturday, March 21, at 7:00 PM
Sunday, March 22, at 11:00 AM
About the Program
2008 National Book Critics Circle Award winner Dexter Filkins talks about his coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at an event hosted by Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC. Using projected images taken by photographers he has worked with as a New York Times correspondent, Mr. Filkins describes the difficulty of life in the two war zones.
About the Author
Dexter Filkins is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He was based in Baghdad from 2003 to 2006. Before joining the Times, he was New Delhi bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and was recently a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard. For more, visit: www.dexterfilkins.net.
from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Forever-War-Dexter-Filkins/dp/0307266397/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1237659647&sr=8-1From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Filkins, a New York Times prize–winning reporter, is widely regarded as among the finest war correspondents of this generation. His richly textured book is based on his work in Afghanistan and Iraq since 1998. It begins with a Taliban-staged execution in Kabul. It ends with Filkins musing on the names in a WWI British cemetery in Baghdad. In between, the work is a vivid kaleidoscope of vig-nettes. Individually, the strength of each story is its immediacy; together they portray a theater of the absurd, in which Filkins, an extraordinarily brave man, moves as both participant and observer. Filkins does not editorialize—a welcome change from the punditry that shapes most writing from these war zones. This book also differs essentially from traditional war correspondence because of its universal empathy, feelings enhanced by Filkins's spare prose. Saudi women in Kabul airport, clad in burqas and stylish shoes, bemoan their husbands' devotion to jihad. An Iraqi casually says to his friend, Let's go kill some Americans. A marine is shot dead escorting Filkins on a photo opportunity. Iraqi soldiers are disconcerted when he appears in running shorts (They looked at
in horror, as if I were naked). Carl von Clausewitz said war is a chameleon. In vividly illustrating the varied ways people in Afghanistan and iraq have been affected by ongoing war, Filkins demonstrates that truth in prose. 5 photos. (Sept. 17)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Harrowingly detailed . . . Filkins makes us see, with almost hallucinogenic immediacy, the true human meaning and consequences of the ‘war on terror.’”
-The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2008
“The gaping wounds of Iraq and Afghanistan have produced a torrent of words, but no single volume so far has the precision and power of The Forever War . . . Filkins’ set pieces have the absolute clarity of lightning flashes that burn away the fog of war.”
-Time Best Nonfiction Books of 2008
“Not since Michael Herr in Dispatches . . . has a reporter written as vividly about combat as Filkins does from Afghanistan and Iraq.”
-USA Today 10 Best Books of 2008
“Filkins’s meticulously constructed vignettes . . . illuminate and humanize the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.”
-Los Angeles Times Favorite Books 2008
“The Forever War . . . achieves a gripping, raw immediacy.”
-The Boston Globe’s Year’s Best Books
“Splendid.”
-Washington Post Book World Best Nonfiction of 2008
“Dexter Filkins's The Forever War is the best piece of war journalism I've ever read. He paints a portrait of war that is so nuanced, so filled with absurdities and heartbreak and unexpected heroes and villains, that it makes most of what we see and hear about Iraq and Afghanistan seem shrill and two-dimensional by comparison. And yet, as tragic as the events he describes are, the book manages to be a thing of towering beauty.”
-Dave Eggers, Guardian Best Books of the Year
"The Forever War is already a classic–it has the timeless feel of all great war literature. Dexter Filkins’s combination of courage and sensitivity is so rare that books like his come along only once every major war. This one is ours."
-George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq
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