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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #174 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-16
• Released on: 2008-09-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Filkins, a New York Times prize–winning reporter, is widely regarded as among the finest war correspondents of this generation. His richly textured book is based on his work in Afghanistan and Iraq since 1998. It begins with a Taliban-staged execution in Kabul. It ends with Filkins musing on the names in a WWI British cemetery in Baghdad. In between, the work is a vivid kaleidoscope of vig-nettes. Individually, the strength of each story is its immediacy; together they portray a theater of the absurd, in which Filkins, an extraordinarily brave man, moves as both participant and observer. Filkins does not editorialize—a welcome change from the punditry that shapes most writing from these war zones. This book also differs essentially from traditional war correspondence because of its universal empathy, feelings enhanced by Filkins's spare prose. Saudi women in Kabul airport, clad in burqas and stylish shoes, bemoan their husbands' devotion to jihad. An Iraqi casually says to his friend, Let's go kill some Americans. A marine is shot dead escorting Filkins on a photo opportunity. Iraqi soldiers are disconcerted when he appears in running shorts (They looked at [my legs] in horror, as if I were naked). Carl von Clausewitz said war is a chameleon. In vividly illustrating the varied ways people in Afghanistan and iraq have been affected by ongoing war, Filkins demonstrates that truth in prose. 5 photos. (Sept. 17)
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Review
"The Forever War is already a classic–it has the timeless feel of all great war literature. Dexter Filkins’s combination of courage and sensitivity is so rare that books like his come along only once every major war. This one is ours."
-George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq

“Dexter Filkins is the preeminent war correspondent of my generation, fearless, compassionate, and brutally honest. The Forever War is his astonishing story. It is one of the best books about war that I have ever read. It will stay with me forever.”
-Jeffrey Goldberg, author of Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide

“Dexter Filkins has seen the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan; he has stood in the ruins of the World Trade Center; he has been in the heat of battle in Iraq; indeed, no one else has been closer to the action than this courageous and thoughtful observer. This is a sensational book in the best sense.”
-Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

"Stunning...it is not facetious to speak of work like that of Dexter Filkins as defining the 'culture' of a war...This unforgettable narrative [represents]...a haunting spiritual witness that will make this volume a part of this awful war's history."
-Robert Stone, on the front page of The New York Times Book Review

“Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War, brutally intimate, compassionate, often poetic accounts of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, is destined to become a classic.”
-Vanity Fair

“Extraordinary . . . if what Michael Herr brought back from Vietnam in Dispatches was a sort of Jackson Pollock–streaks of blood, trickles of dread, splattershot of hard rock and harder drugs–The Forever War is like a pointillist Seurat, a neo-Impressionist juxtaposition of spots of pure color with black holes and open wounds.”
-John Leonard, Harper’s

“The definitive–and heartbreakingly humanizing–report from the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . The Forever War is the most affecting account of how all this madness came to be. Which means it’s also the most effective, since madness cannot be explained, only felt–and anyone who reads this book is going to feel it in the marrow . . . Few war reporters can match Filkins’s ambition and fortitude; even fewer possess his descriptive powers . . . The Forever War [is] about all wars, everywhere–and a book that will be read fifty years from now.”
-Andrew Corsello, GQ

“Dexter Filkins is one of war writings’ modern marvels, a writer of tremendous gifts and appropriate grit to go where others will not . . . The level of accessibility of Filkins’s work . . . is the writer’s greatest gift. He parts the gun smoke in a preternatural way. He seems to see things others simply do not . . . It’s an ability that allows him to convey inelegant truths of war in crisp, never saccharine prose . . . The importance of what Filkins captures here is inestimable . . . If no book can ever truly take you into the foxhole, Filkins’s War takes you as close as you might be comfortable.”
-Henry C. Jackson, Associated Press

“Unflinching . . . Filkins confronts the absurdity of war head-on . . . This is a page-turner, and one of the most astounding books yet written about the war in Iraq . . . Filkins doesn’t lecture, he just reports, in great and perfect detail. It’s possibly the only true requirement for a good war story. Or any story, for that matter.”
-Gilbert Cruz, Time

“[Filkins is] an almost absurdly brave war correspondent . . . his brilliant, sad, unique book . . . may be the most readable book about Iraq. It’s certainly one of the most artful. . . We’re the better for it.”
-Hilary Frey, The New York Observer

“Brilliant . . . The Forever War . . . deserves to be ranked as a classic . . . and is likely to be regarded as the definitive account of how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were experienced by those who actually waged them . . . Thanks to one reporter’s heroic act of witness and brilliant recitation of what he saw, we can see the war–as it is, and for ourselves.”
-Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

“Profoundly moving . . . Grim, uplifting, and arrow-accurate, The Forever War is a classic.”
-Gaylord Dodd, The Wichita Eagle

“The Forever War is credibly the best single source from which to glean an understanding of the so-called war on terror from its front lines.”
-Art Winslow, The Chicago Tribune

“A kaleidoscope of images and intensity . . . It is written in finely honed bursts of vibrant color that capture the peculiar culture of the war . . . It is a raw and riveting account . . . his honesty in portraying the war implicitly exposes the hollowness of the platitudes used in Washington to defend it.”
-Chris Hedges, Philadelphia Inquirer

“For [its] unconventional format, and for its literary merit, The Forever War has been compared–and not at all outrageously–to Michael Herr’s Dispatches. Filkins evokes the terror and terrible thrill of battle better than any of his colleagues . . . Not only does he display a reporter’s sharp eye for detail . . . he captures the sights and sounds of combat with considerable skill, in spare but powerful prose.”
-Chris Toensing, The Nation

“Brilliant, riveting, and deeply disquieting.”
-Hugh Hewitt, Townhall

“Unvarnished and unforgettable.”
-Esquire

“Splendid . . . it shines as a work of literature, illuminating the human cost of war.”
-Bing West, The Washington Post

“Rich with details both grotesque and sublime . . . The Forever War is a masterpiece of nuance.”
-Matthew B. Stannard, The San Francisco Chronicle

“Gut-wrenching and touching . . .Mr. Filkins’s stories are those of a writer willing to endure hardship, danger and anguish to paint an accurate picture of war for the American public . . . His prose is as blunt as it is powerful.”
-Lee H. Hamilton, The New York Times

“In his extraordinary–and extraordinarily important–book, [Dexter] Filkins does not rush to condemn; his is an impeccably balanced story of hope and despair . . . The Forever War is indispensible: a lesson in reporting.”
-James Grant, The Herald

“Filkins . . . is a courageous reporter and an original writer . . . The narrative holds together through the power of his writing . . . The Forever War is an astonishingly good book.”
-Evan Wright, LA Weekly

“Addictive . . . [Filkins is] a master of the moment, of the concrete, of texture; where others try to explain, he wants you to know what being there feels like . . . I couldn’t put this book down.”
-Craig Seligman, Bloomberg

“Dexter Filkins . . . is well on his way to becoming the preeminent war reporter of this tumultuous era . . . His understated prose offers a stiletto-sharp account of places he’s gone and people he’s met.”
-John Marshall, Seattle Post Intelligencer

“Brilliant . . . Ever the good reporter, Filkins allows the many contradictions of the place and the things he witnesssed and experienced there to speak for themselves. His language is straightforward and economical, allowing the war to come through with an unfiltered-seeming intensity and immediacy . . . Comparisons to Michael Herr’s Vietnam masterpiece Dispatches are not unwarranted.”
-Clint Douglas, The Washington Monthly

“Wonderfully written and carefully researched . . . Filkins’s meticulous attention to detail and his bravery . . . [are] evident on every page . . . The Forever War . . . serves as a powerful lesson in what it takes to cover the complexities of war . . . [Dexter Filkins] has put himself in the middle of this madness to deliver a stunning and illuminating story.”
-Chuck Leddy, Christian Science Monitor

“Phenomenal . . . The Forever War makes the war in Iraq so real, so haunting, that you’ll want to sleep with the book next to your bed and read it in every spare moment until the last page. It does what a great book about war, loss, politics, and sacrifice should–it moves, shocks, entertains, educates, and inspires. The Forever War is peerless–a classic.”
-Genvieve Long, The Epoch Times

“I picked up Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War and couldn’t put it down. This book . . . will be deemed a classic of [this] long, sad conflict . . . Filkins’s pages give a real flavor of the mad, violent, unpredictable reality of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq . . . his prose sings.”
-Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle

“A chilling and ethereal narrative of loss and the promise of loss.”
-Jim Chiavelli, The Boston Globe

“[Filkins is] the real deal, a reporter’s reporter . . . his brave and stunning new book . . . pulses with prose so lean–whipsawing between brutality and beauty–that it takes your breath away.”
-Paul Grondahl, Times Union

“Stunning . . . His perspective is unique . . . he specializes in misery, chaos, and confusion, yet without losing sympathy for soldiers and civilians.”
-Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

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

Fantastic Reporting From a Brave Reporter
Be careful when you begin reading this book, you won't be able to put it down. One compelling story after another, all told from the viewpoint of a reporter who puts himself in situations that many would shy away from.

This book really opened my eyes to the many challenges that Iraqis face as a people, the reconciliation of the different tribes and the many obstacles still ahead.

Fantastic book.

Required Reading
This book truly is the "Dispatches" equivalent for the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Filkins creates a mosaic with beautifully written stories about the absurdity, chaos, hate, inhumanity, insanity and courage of these wars. A war based on lies resulting in the destruction of millions of lives because some ill-informed ideologues, politicians and militarists can make some money and win some senseless argument that has no answer - that war is the subject of this book and it is an invaluable contribution. Why? Because it captures the reality of this war so that Americans of all political stripes can gain insight into what their elected government has done in their name. If I had to suggest one change to the book, it would be the title: The Forever and Forgotten War - How Millions of Lives Were Destroyed and Nobody In America Noticed Other Than the Families of the Fallen.

God Bless Our Soldiers. Thank you for your service. May America welcome you home with open arms and help you heal from your wounds in the coming years.

Filkins
This book documents the human side of war beyond what we read in the papers and see on the news each night. It's a brutally honest and often disturbing account of the reality he saw whilst reporting in middle East. The book reads like a series of stories about everyday people and their experiences during the war. Filkins befriended a number of Iraqi's while there and provides a voice to their experiences through his writing. He introduces us to everyday people, from the young girl who would join him during his bare-legged runs along the Tigris River to average Iraqi citizens who spoke with open contempt of Americans for having destroyed their country (p. 244).