Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War [Bargain Price] [Paperback]

Matt Gallagher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 12, 2011

Based on Captain Matt Gallagher's controversial and popular blog, which the U.S. Army shut down in June 2008, Kaboom is a sardonic, unnerving, one-of-a-kind Iraq war memoir. "At turns hilarious, maddening and terrifying," providing "raw and insightful snapshots of conflict" (Washington Post), Kaboom resonates with stoical detachment from and timeless insight into a war that we are still trying to understand.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this hauntingly direct war memoir, a cocky West Coast frat boy becomes a reflective leader in the later part of the Iraq conflict. Not long after his 2007 deployment, Lt. Gallagher had become a much-read blogger, but his blunt account ran afoul of the higher-ups. In this blog-like memoir of his year-plus in Iraq, he provides an episodic, day-by-day account of life during wartime, covering everything from the fear of shooting innocent citizens to the impact of a Dear John letter on a unit. Gallagher employs a close eye and enormous compassion when recounting tragedies like a horrible explosive accident and pervasive poverty and despair in an area known as "trash village." Gallagher's vivid, atmospheric descriptions can occasionally get away from him ("It was modern Iraq, permanently soaked in a blood-red-sea past it would never be able to part"), but he provides much canny, moving commentary on the power of war to transform soldiers and civilians: "Suddenly the stare was the norm house by house, block by block, and town by town, and all of the flower petals dried up, and we suddenly recognized that those cheers of gratitude were actually pleas for salvation."
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Military Review, March/April 2011
“Insightful, colorful, and at times irreverent…An excellent snapshot of a junior officer embroiled in a counterinsurgency fight…An exceptionally engaging read.”

Entertainment Weekly Online, 4/7/11
“Simultaneously blisteringly funny and dead serious.”

 

Smoke, April 2011

“A sardonic, unnerving, one-of-a-kind Iraq war memoir…Kaboom resonates with stoical detachment from and timeless insight into a war that we are still trying to understand.”

Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/13/11
“Gallagher's writing is raw and uncensored, and also very good. In the midst of a war we're still struggling to understand, it's a privilege to understand very well at least one person's part in it.”

WomanAroundTown.com, 6/5/11
“Irreverent, terrifying, and very humorous, Gallagher’s book will make some people angry, and will validate the suppositions of others.”

 

Bangkok Post (Thailand), 8/14/11

“Gallagher’s compelling work…offers the reader an unfiltered, brutally honest look into the life of a young lieutenant struggling to bring some semblance of security and stability to a very unsecure and unstable place.”

 

Portland Book Review, 9/17/11

“Gallagher’s unbridled candor recounting his time in Iraq is shocking, frightening and at times, deals with the mundane rigors of army life, but is ultimately to be commended…A compelling read… Kaboom allows the reader to ride alongside an officer’s day to day life in a war zone.”

 

SmallWarsJournal.com, 9/19/11

“Gallagher’s Kaboom, simply stated, will likely be remembered as the quintessential memoir of his generation’s combat experiences, particularly in Iraq.  Not only does it successfully combine the finest authorial innovations of blogging with finest aspects of traditional memoir writing, but it easily and slyly avoids the traps of each as well.  It is unabashedly self-centered and self-aware, but manages to sound anything but self-absorbed.  It is full of pop culture references, clever writing, and the cynicism that accompanies his generation without sounding for a second like it is contrived or flimsy. In a word, his work is authentic, a rendering of wartime experiences that has been experienced by nearly his entire generation of warriors but has not been matched by his generation of writers…Mostly, though, this is just a beautifully written book that speaks for many who share Gallagher’s experiences.”

 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; First Trade Paper Edition edition (April 12, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306819678
• ASIN: B006CDL666
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (89 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #356,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Matt Gallagher joined the U.S. Army in 2005 and received a commission in the armored cavalry. Following a fifteen-month deployment in Iraq, Gallagher left the army in 2009. Originally from Reno, Nevada, he now lives in New York City and is an MFA candidate at Columbia University.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The real deal April 20, 2010

By Robert G. Leroe VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

As a retired LTC and combat veteran, I found Kaboom hard to put down. It offers a platoon-level gritty look at what happens outside the wire where the real conflict is found. I've nothing against the desk jockeys who enable the action, so long as they don't impede it (sometimes they do). LT G gets dirty with the troops and into the scary places where things are happening--namely, missions of substance. While some things don't change in war, every war has its own unique touches, vocabulary, and frustrations. His depiction of the diverse people, both US and Iraqi, are outstanding. Every war has its characters, heroes, and screw-ups. I came away from this book with a better appreciation of the feel of the war. Vividly depicted are the conflicts with higher-ups, the various dangers on the ground, responding to change, funny stuff happening, and all very human, very real. This should be required reading for Officers Basic, every branch.

58 of 66 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Engaging ground-level war memoir March 1, 2010

By Daniel H. Bigelow VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Junior officer Matt Gallagher parlayed his 15 minutes of fame as a widely-read military blogger into a contract for this memoir of his 15-month deployment in Iraq, where he was assigned to lead a cavalry platoon in counterinsurgency duties in a small desert municipality. Later, he gets in trouble when he submits an unauthorized blog entry complaining about an irrational promotion that takes him away from his beloved platoon, but he gets kicked upstairs anyway and spends nearly half of his deployment as an intelligence captain near Sadr City. Gallagher's sympathy, and his strongest material, lies with the first section of the memoir in which he is actually leading soldiers in dangerous situations -- he wisely emphasizes this part of his war experience in the book.

It's interesting to see what modern war looks like, and Gallagher writes an engaging picture of it. Counterinsurgency is more like what we would think of as policing than the types of battles we associate with war in the movies -- diplomacy and the coolheadedness not to shoot in panic situations are more important to his mission than violence. Throughout his deployment, neither Gallagher nor anyone in his unit is injured in combat or fires upon anyone. The greatest loss to his unit comes in an accidental fire that critically burns a member of his platoon; the greatest loss of innocence he experiences is when he gives a conditional order to fire, even though circumstances make it unnecessary for his men to shoot anyone on his orders. But some military experience is universal, and the usual ground-level gripes about the bizarre and labyrinthine American military bureaucracy get a thorough airing here. (You'd think after all this time we'd have figured a way around that.)

Considering the author's blogger origin and his book's subtitle ("Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War"), I expected a more colloquial, Diablo Cody-style book, but Gallagher aims a little higher than that on the literary scale. A talented writer, he often succeeds in being more lyrical and evocative than I expected. But the guy's young and pretty well satisfied with himself, and that comes through too in some ill-advised metaphors and some attempts at poetical, stream-of-consciousness interludes that seemed to me to overreach his talent (your mileage, of course, may vary). As he did in the military, Gallagher sets high standards for himself as a writer -- I guess I can't fault him for that. But this book would have been nearly as good if it had been written half as carefully, since its greatest value is in the vivid characters Gallagher evokes and his stereotype-busting descriptions of the role of the private soldier and junior officer in twenty-first century war.

36 of 42 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressed March 12, 2010

By Tnkboy

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

My copy of Kaboom arrived Thursday at 2pm. I started reading it at 3:30 pm expecting to knock out a chapter or two a day until I'd finished it. By 6:53 pm that same day I had finished the entire book. It drew me in within the first three paragraphs and didn't let go. Well written account of what it was like over there dealing with the complex, wild world of COIN while dealing with sheiks who want to make a difference in their country, or sheiks who only want to make a buck.

Superiors out to make a name for themselves at the expense of their character, our how tight the common Soldier bonds with other Soldiers of all races and nationalities that they may have never even spoken to had they passed each other on the streets as civilians.

If you're looking for intense combat,with bullets flying on every page then go pick up a few copies of a Sgt Rock comic book. If you want a realistic look into a 15 month deployment on the tail end of The Surge in a COIN fight while trying to maintain your sanity and sense of purpose,while staying true to yourself,your country,and your Soldiers and while managing to make sense of this period of the war that the Soldiers were living,scarifying,fighting and dying in while the rest of America was at the mall,then this book is for you.