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The Forever War | 
| Author: Dexter Filkins
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $25.00
Buy New: $15.28
You Save: $9.72 (39%)
Rating:  58 reviews
Sales Rank: 180
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 5.8 x 1.6
ISBN: 0307266397
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.70443
EAN: 9780307266392
ASIN: 0307266397
Publication Date: September 16, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
From the front lines of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, a searing, unforgettable book that captures the human essence of the greatest conflict of our time.
Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, the prizewinning New York Times correspondent whose work was hailed by David Halberstam as “reporting of the highest quality imaginable,” we witness the remarkable chain of events that began with the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, continued with the attacks of 9/11, and moved on to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Filkins’s narrative moves across a vast and various landscape of amazing characters and astonishing scenes: deserts, mountains, and streets of carnage; a public amputation performed by Taliban; children frolicking in minefields; skies streaked white by the contrails of B-52s; a night’s sleep in the rubble of Ground Zero.
We embark on a foot patrol through the shadowy streets of Ramadi, venture into a torture chamber run by Saddam Hussein. We go into the homes of suicide bombers and into street-to-street fighting with a battalion of marines. We meet Iraqi insurgents, an American captain who loses a quarter of his men in eight days, and a young soldier from Georgia on a rooftop at midnight reminiscing about his girlfriend back home. A car bomb explodes, bullets fly, and a mother cradles her blinded son.
Like no other book, The Forever War allows us a visceral understanding of today’s battlefields and of the experiences of the people on the ground, warriors and innocents alike. It is a brilliant, fearless work, not just about America’s wars after 9/11, but ultimately about the nature of war itself.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 53 more reviews...
 A dangerous life in an American disaster zone January 4, 2009
book man (Tucson zz usa)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a great book; easy to read and thought provoking. Filkins introduces us to his world; a choatic military disaster in the middle east. Written in short story form, we see the war from one man's perspective. His respect and admiration for the "grunts" and Iraqi/Afgangi victims comes through on every page. Filkins makes no judgements, it's not a political book, we only see the results of the Bush Administrations actions in the years 2002-2006 (the Rumsfeld years). When Filkins left there seemed to be no hope for Iraq. We can only hope and pray that in 2009 that hope has returned.
Brilliantly Layered Impressions of Afghanistan and Iraq January 4, 2009
Ethan Cooper (Big Apple)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The source of THE FOREVER WAR is 561 notebooks that Dexter Filkins filled in a nine year period, when he worked as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times in Afghanistan and The New York Times in Iraq. In a section of acknowledgements at the end of his book, Filkins thanks Jonathan Segal, his editor at Knopf, who "helped shape my unwieldy ideas and an even more unwieldy manuscript..." While Filkins is surely being generous, what he and Segal succeed in delivering is a highly layered rendering of Filkins's experiences that both clarifies and conveys the complexity of these failed states. Filkins and Segal, in other words, have managed this mother lode of on-the-scene impressions brilliantly. They have created a book that is highly perceptive, never strident or polemical, and absolutely riveting.
The layering of experience is everywhere in TFW. One quick illustration is Chapter Eight, which focuses on a maternity hospital in Diwaniya that Jerry Bremer visits. This begins with Bremer's advance man, who is a Republican political operative, not an Iraqi expert. Then Bremer exits his Chinook and gives a speech, like a politician campaigning, citing statistics showing that all 200 hospitals in Iraq are open, that the country's health care is improving, and so on. But what Filkins learns from the doctors is that there is no electricity. As a result, the hospital cannot sterilize instruments or warm the incubators and its premature babies are dying. In this and other visits to this hospital, Filkins also finds one employee who hates Saddam more than the American occupation but another who hates the chaos of the occupation more than Saddam. This single short chapter, in other words, shows the effort to manage the story, the reality, and the complex reactions and allegiances of the Iraqis. Throughout, TFW has a very rich narrative.
In TFW, Filkins does many things exceedingly well. But among my favorites is his discussion of the nihilism of the insurgents. In contemplating videos of suicide bomb-ing, he writes:
"The videos made me wonder. What was more important to these guys, the suicide or the murder? You'd think it would be the murder, but I wasn't always so sure; there was a hint of nihilism in everything Al-Qaeda did. At the end of the Palestine-Sheraton video, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia at the time, gave a little speech. He promised victory for the Islamic world and, barring that, annihilation. `If the enemy wins,' Zarqawi promised, `we will burn everything.'" This nihilism is apparent in everything Filkins writes about Al-Qaeda.
Other excellent chapters examine ethic cleansing, IEDs, and the death of Lance Cor-poral William L. Miller. Highly recommended.
A "wow" experience January 3, 2009
Jason R. Frost (Connecticut)
Dexter Filkins' "The Forever War" is the gripping tale of a journalist's experience in the Middle East. Dexter Filkins covered the Middle East since 1998. He is able to draw upon the unique perspective of viewing Afghanistan before 9-11, Ground Zero on 9-11, and the consequences of 9-11 in the Middle East. If you are looking for an explicit commentary of the war, an analysis of other American achievements and mishaps, or a damning expose of the backwardness of the Middle East you will be disappointed. Instead, this book is an incredible synthesis of anecdotes that will allow the reader to form his own idea of the War of Terror. This book made me think -- it is as deep as the war itself. It it the only book on Iraq that has been able to capture the implicit intellectual complexities of this war. Not only is the book fantastic from an intellectual standpoint, it is a wonderful piece of literature. "The Forever War" really is a well written book. Bravo, Mr. Filkins, for a job well done. Thank you for your courage and honesty. Most of all, God Bless our troops, and the innocents of Iraq and Afghanistan. If I only learned one thing from Mr. Filkins, it is that no one really understands the war until they have lived through it.
 The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from a personal perspective January 1, 2009
Gwendolyn Dawson (Houston, Texas United States)
The Forever War is Dexter Filkins's personal account of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. As a foreign correspondent for the New York Times stationed in Afghanistan (2001-02) and Iraq (2003-06), Filkins has bona fides in spades. Fortunately, he's also a good writer. Filkins's straightforward prose is well-crafted and clear, never detracting from the real story.
Rather than a comprehensive account of the wars, The Forever War is a zoom lens focusing on discrete scenes. One scene might describe a roof-top discussion with a patrolling U.S. marine, while the next scene jumps to an interview with the family of a suicide bomber. Filkins doesn't waste any time with transitions between unrelated scenes. This choppy structure is occasionally jarring but becomes easier to follow over time. Taken together, the disparate scenes reveal a great deal about the larger war, particularly the futility of the conflict. Despite aggrandizing political statements to the contrary, things aren't getting any better in Iraq, and there's no clear way forward. At times, I found myself wishing for a more global perspective--a more panoramic shot--to help me understand the larger picture and to place Filkins's experiences within a more complete timeline. However, there are plenty of other books that present that perspective. In this book, Filkins is trying to do something different and far more valuable.
TWO THUMBS UP December 29, 2008
B. Rosenthal (Nanuet, NY)
The Forever War takes you right there to the HELL which is WAR. Passage after passage, you are witness to what the media does not tell you. Have you ever wondered who the insurgents are? How many people make up our enemies in Iraq? How many groups are we really fighting? How many civil wars are really going on? This books gives truth and insight to these questions. Dexter puts his life on the line to report what is in this book. That is what makes this book extra valuable and respectable. I could not put this book down. After reading The Forever War, I thought about how crazed war can make people. Dexter says, "War brings out the best and worst of people". I believe that but we are stuck there trying to get the Shiites and Sunnis and Kurds to come together and control the whole of Iraq. Can it be done? Will it be done? Or will Iraq just be another Irsael with endless fighting amongst fellow citizens under mother country? Only history will tell.
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