First published 2008
Dexter Filkins chronicles America's longest conflict through firsthand reporting from Afghanistan and Iraq. The prizewinning New York Times correspondent traces events from the Taliban's emergence in the 1990s through the September 11 attacks to the subsequent wars. Filkins takes readers on foot patrols through Ramadi's dangerous streets, into homes of suicide bombers, and alongside Marines in urban combat. He documents a Taliban public amputation, children playing in minefields, and B-52 contrails across desert skies. The narrative follows an American captain who loses a quarter of his soldiers in eight days, a young Georgian soldier on a midnight rooftop thinking of home, and Iraqi insurgents navigating occupation. Filkins enters Saddam Hussein's torture chambers, sleeps in Ground Zero's rubble, and witnesses a mother holding her blinded child after a car bombing. The book captures both warriors and civilians caught in modern warfare's chaos, offering an unfiltered view of battlefields that shaped the early 21st century.
Genres: history, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, military-history, american-history
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: gritty, intimate
Setting: Afghanistan, Iraq, Ramadi
Period: 1990s, 2000s, 21st-century
342 pages · Hardcover · Borzoi Books/Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Content warnings: death, graphic-violence, war