| Best Books of 2007: Top 100 Editors' Pick. See more in our Best Books of 2007 Store. | ||
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On Call In Hell: A Doctor's Iraq War Story by Cdr. Richard Jadick
$5.99
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House to House by David Bellavia
$6.99
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We Were One: Shoulder to Shoulder with the Marines Who Took Fallujah by Patrick K. O'Donnell
$16.50
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Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America's Most Secret Special Operations Team by Michael Smith
$16.47
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No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah by Bing West
$10.20
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Fraught with life-and-death drama as combat intrinsically is, writing a compelling war story is actually quite difficult. The challenge is to capture the kaleidoscopic chaos of battle, keep the reader oriented and humanize the soldiers caught in the maelstrom. Raddatz does all of this impeccably well. The Long Road Home moves at a breathless pace, vividly conveying the suffocating terror of being surrounded in a maze of city streets by an enemy that is seemingly everywhere and nowhere at once.
Raddatz doesn't flinch at depicting the carnage of war; the book contains descriptions of violence so graphic they are literally gasp-inducing, but the bloodshed is not gratuitous. At one harrowing point, Raddatz relates how a young soldier was shot in the head with such force that the round slammed through his Kevlar helmet and ricocheted several times through his skull. The soldier, a devout Christian and Humvee mechanic named Casey who volunteered to help the trapped platoon, also happened to be Cindy Sheehan's son.
What distinguishes The Long Road Home from other war books is that Raddatz seamlessly shifts from the troops in the crossfire to the anxious souls who stand watch over the loneliest post in any conflict: the spouses, parents and children on the home front. (Cindy Sheehan makes a relatively brief appearance as Casey's grieving mother, but the future antiwar activist is hardly a central character.) Far from interrupting the flow of the story, the profiles of the loved ones back in the States give us a richer understanding of the soldiers in Iraq and infuse the narrative with greater tension.
Stephen "Dusty" Hiller, a 25-year-old specialist, had recently learned that his wife was pregnant with their first son. The night after he charged into Sadr City with one of the lead rescue teams, the doorbell rang at his home back in Fort Hood, Tex. His wife, Lesley, went to answer it, and the exchange that followed is as gut-wrenching as any battle account:
"She opened the door and saw an army chaplain. Another officer in uniform was with him. There wasn't a chance for either visitor to say a word.
" 'No!' Lesley yelled. She was frantic, panic-stricken. 'You all got the wrong house!'
"She slammed the door.
"The officers stayed outside and began calling her name softly.
"After a moment she opened the door a crack.
" 'Are you Mrs. Hiller?' one of them asked.
"She shook her head. 'You have the wrong house,' she insisted.
" 'Is your name Lesley?'
" 'No,' she said again. 'You got the wrong house!' Then she started to scream."
This is storytelling pared down to its essentials. To her great credit, Raddatz knows when a scene is potent enough to get out of the way and let it unfold without heavy-handed embellishment.
Which is not to suggest that Raddatz is simply a stenographer here, mechanically recording an inherently riveting story. Whether it's the image of an Iraqi family casually waving at a passing convoy of American troops dodging a torrent of bullets or a lone soldier drawn to the sight of a sparrow "arcing low and untouched beneath the gunfi