A Signed First Edition Club Recommendation
"The Fighters is a book about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq told from the perspective of the people who fought in those wars. There is little in the way of strategy or policy depicted here. Instead, we are presented with searing descriptions of combat against adversaries who are often unseen, with objectives that are obscure at best, with allies who are poorly trained and of uncertain allegiance, and where “selflessness in extreme circumstances [is] a binding animating trait.” Chivers is both an ex-Marine and a journalist who takes us inside the heads of his protagonists as they endure both the fog and horror of war. It is absolutely riveting."
Publisher Simon & Schuster
Publication Date 2018-08-14
Section New Hardcover - Biography / All Staff Suggestions
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9781451676648
Pulitzer Prize winner C.J. Chivers’ unvarnished account of modern combat, told through the eyes of the fighters who have waged America’s longest wars.
More than 2.7 million Americans have served in Afghanistan or Iraq since September 11, 2001. C.J. Chivers reported from both wars from their beginnings. The Fighters vividly conveys the physical and emotional experience of war as lived by six combatants: a fighter pilot, a corpsman, a scout helicopter pilot, a grunt, an infantry officer, and a Special Forces sergeant.
Chivers captures their courage, commitment, sense of purpose, and ultimately their suffering, frustration, and moral confusion as new enemies arise and invasions give way to counterinsurgency duties for which American forces were often not prepared.
The Fighters is a tour de force, a portrait of modern warfare that parts from slogans to do for American troops what Stephen Ambrose did for the G.I.s of World War II and Michael Herr for the grunts in Vietnam. Told with the empathy and understanding of an author who is himself an infantry veteran, The Fighters presents the long arc of two wars.
