The Forever War [Audio CD]

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Books on Tape
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1415957819
• ISBN-13: 978-1415957813
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (165 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,681,275 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dexter Filkins, a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, has covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Before that, he worked for the Los Angeles Times, where he was chief of the paper's New Delhi bureau, and for The Miami Herald. He has been a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and a winner of a George Polk Award and two Overseas Press Club awards. Most recently, he was a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

142 of 145 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptional, October 5, 2008

By 

Jon Hunt "musician, teacher" (Old Greenwich, Ct. USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Forever War (Hardcover)

Of the dozens of books written about the war in Iraq, along comes Dexter Filkins with a commentary on Iraq that blows the others away. Non-political and highly personal, Filkins goes after the day-to-day story that, through accumulation, delivers a report about the Iraqi citizenry over the years after the invasion. He captures it with style, wisdom and grace.

Americans have largely known the Iraqi war through political slants with a small degree of knowledge of the street. The author adds so much to the discourse. Who knew the depth that kidnapping played or how even going to the bathroom played with both American troops and the Iraqi people, disrupted as it was. This is a book of color and passion. I was particularly moved by a paragraph in which he relates how one would know if an Iraqi was killed by a Sunni or a Shia. The exceptional side of "The Forever War" is not only the presentation of the story but the narrative in which it is told.

Filkins has his own boots on the ground, grinding through Baghdad, Falluja and other hot spots. His book is one of remarkable courage under fire and serves to remind us of what our government simply didn't know about Iraq, or about which it didn't care. I highly recommend it.

96 of 105 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and Moving, September 20, 2008

By 

Thomas Perkins (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Forever War (Hardcover)

This will, I think, become the classic book of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. It is non-political and consists of multiple snapshots rangng over many years, not always in chronological sequence. These are Filkins's carefully selected memories of his life as a N.Y. Times reporter on the front lines, as well as his experiences on 9/11 at ground zero.

He makes no effort to "explain" the turmoil of the Middle East, but one puts the book down with a new understanding of some of the powerful and destructive forces at play. He is respectful of the U.S. military and his sketches of the bravery of the Americans fighting against bad odds, most of them only teenagers, is very moving.

Politics don't even intrude in the brief chapter on Ahmad Chalabi, it is rather a sketch on the personality of this complex and slippery player in the power struggles of the time.

I recommend this book as a companion to the excellent "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" which documents the appaling stupidity of U.S. policy in Iraq flowing down from the top. The "Forever War" balances that with the street smarts courage of our military. Still, Filkins would, I am sure, agree that imposing "democracy" by military force guarantees a forever war.

This is a powerful book, well and clearly written, by an experienced and compassionate observer.

124 of 140 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strange Odyssey, September 22, 2008

By 

Betty (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Forever War (Hardcover)

Made In Hero: The War for Soap

Dexter Filkins has written THE FOREVER WAR to tell us about Iraq. Afghanistan is also in there, along with countless other wars not directly visible, though just as bizarre and just as real. More improbable than the wars themselves is what an incredibly beautiful book can be written about their depressing situations. Or put another way, what a beautiful world it would be if everyone could write like this, but without the wars. Filkins offers all the elements of great literature: the sublime, the ridiculous, and the Zen.

On the surface, Dexter Filkins has chronicled his experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq. But aside from his unfiltered impressions of those distant worlds, THE FOREVER WAR really comes down to the personal quest that is likely to greet anyone trying to come home from a war. Reaching the final chapter of THE FOREVER WAR, I was sad. I hadn't wanted the journey to end, and felt a little guilty about that, considering the suffering between the pages. Still, for all the grief and sorrow, THE FOREVER WAR feels like a story about survivors.

The improbability remains. Why the beautiful book about such a doomed affair as THE FOREVER WAR? And what is the Forever War, exactly? Possibly a riddle, or chronicle, or quest? Maybe the definition doesn't matter. Aristotle formulated that writing is catharsis. I wonder if it's an addiction, a kind of cure. Some believe it's an act of redemption. Better yet, Gabriel Garcia Marquez calls writing "a state of grace." Whatever else it is, I hope THE FOREVER WAR is that.