What Was Asked of Us
An Oral History of the Iraq War by the Soldiers Who Fought It
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
In this modern-day successor to the Vietnam classic Everything We Had, award-winning investigative reporter Trish Wood offers a gritty, authentic, and uncensored history of the war in Iraq, as told by the American soldiers who are fighting it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The thing about fighting in a war, relates one soldier in this penetrating, terrifying and important book, "is that there's no way to put into words what actually happened." Yet with these brutally straightforward accounts by 29 American veterans of the Iraq War, Wood an award-winning Canadian investigative reporter proves her own subject wrong. Wood's deftness as interviewer and editor renders her own presence scarce, freeing each soldier to provide firsthand looks at botched reconstruction efforts, intelligence snafus and the practicalities of heroism. Among these stories by soldiers from widely varying ideological and personal backgrounds, unexpected examples are the born-again Christian, appalled by the abuse he witnesses at Abu Ghraib, who asks, "America, what always makes us right?"; and the ex-drug addict, a self-described "left-wing nut," who calls the war "a meaningless conflict" yet acknowledges that "I loved every firefight I was in because for those few brief seconds nothing else matters." Colloquial, coarse and compelling, these narratives flash with humor, horror, nihilism and poesy. Despite the layers of tragedy, the ascendant message is one of courage and self-sacrifice amid war's absurdities. 16 pages b&w photos.
Customer Reviews
I am amazed
I am a Vet who served 2 tours in Iraq. I saw the title and said what ever probably just another jaded book but I got the sample and read it. The intro and chapter 1 had me. The intro said alot of the things you feel. I moved back home after 11 years in the military and we are not a big military town. You talk to "normal" people and they don't get it. Chapter 1 was like time travel it goes back to the intro 1% of us are vets and we get it.
Not exactly oral history
This is a good book. It gives us some clear views into the lives and feelings of some soldiers in the Iraq war. What it doesn't give us are the questions that were asked in the interviews and the reasons they were asked and any information about how the narrators were picked. As a reader, I had no way way of knowing how much the transcripts were edited and what theories governed that editing. In other words, although the book is a "good read," I had no idea what I was reading. If the book had simply presented itself as a collection of edited interviews with soldiers who fought in Iraq, I would have liked more. But if a book is going to call itself an "oral history," then I would like to know more how the material got into it and what got taken out of it and by whom and why.