An outstanding narrative about a single unit’s harrowing experiences in the “forever war.”
An urgent account of a parachute infantry regiment in Afghanistan.
Most books about the war in Afghanistan end grimly, and this one more than most, but readers will find it impossible to put down. Wall Street Journal Midwest correspondent Kesling, a former Marine officer in Iraq and Afghanistan, follows Bravo Company of the elite 82nd Airborne Division, already experienced from earlier tours, on their 2009 deployment. The author delivers vivid biographies of a dozen soldiers who “grew up as kids playing Army in the woods…waiting for the day they could enlist and head off to boot camp. They watched movies like Full Metal Jacket and The Green Berets and hagiographic tales of manly heroism.” During their deployment, Bravo soldiers ventured into the Arghandab Valley, an extremely dangerous area where a previous unit had stopped patrolling, “tired of getting fucked up by Taliban bombs.” Kesling delivers a gripping, detailed, nuts-and-bolt account of their ordeal. Only three men died, but a dozen “lost at least one limb,” and half the company received Purple Hearts. Most unnervingly, they almost never saw the enemy, who kept out of sight but planted hundreds, perhaps thousands, of improvised explosive devices often undetectable by minesweepers. Patrolling was a nightmare in which soldiers carefully walked in the footsteps of the man in front, a difficult tactic to maintain. Kesling devotes more than the usual space to his subjects’ lives after returning home, similar to David Finkel’s approach in Thank You for Your Service. “In the decade since,” writes Kesling, “two men killed themselves…more than a dozen made attempts and others admit they have seriously considered it.” Slowly but with some success, the government, concerned citizens, and even the soldiers themselves began to address the often crippling physical, mental, and emotional consequences of their deployment.
An outstanding narrative about a single unit’s harrowing experiences in the “forever war.”Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-4197-5115-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Sept. 5, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2022
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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