RollnSmoke Reviews: THE FOREVER WAR

The Forever War by Dexter Filkins (Vintage, June, 2009).

Dexter Filkins, a singular and brave foreign correspondent for The New York Times, offers an informed, insider’s glimpse to the chaotic war fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. A fascinating study of contemporary war, Filkins achieves raw and riveting witness in his written portrayal of people, images, events and interviews. In Afghanistan he covers the strife and brutality of Talibani executions, wandering orphans in Kabul, landmines, competing war lords, hellish checkpoints overrun with rape and plunder. And in Iraq – which is the centerpiece of the book – he reports from the battlefront, embedded with American soldiers who are themselves children, waging war in a chaotic tribal culture where Sunnis and Shiites and hundreds of insurgent groups are entangled in a brutal battle of revenge. By becoming “part of the place, part of the despair, part of the death,” Filkins offers a plainly intelligent, non-political, non-preachy, horrifying portrait of war (9.5/10).