What It Is Like To Go To War - Softcover

Marlantes, Karl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802145922 ISBN 13: 9780802145925

Publisher: Grove Press, 2012

Synopsis

#3 on Amazon.com’s 10 Best Books of 2011
The New Yorker Favorite Books from 2011
Hudson Booksellers Best Books of 2011
Barnes & Noble Best Nonfiction Books of 2011
St. Louis Post Dispatch Favorite Books of 2011
A Shelf Awareness Reviewer’s Top Pick of 2011

One of the most important and highly-praised books of 2011, Karl Marlantes’s What It Is Like to Go to War is set to become just as much of a classic as his epic novel Matterhorn.

In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes takes a deeply personal and candid look at the experience and ordeal of combat, critically examining how we might better prepare our young soldiers for war. War is as old as humankind, but in the past, warriors were prepared for battle by ritual, religion, and literature which also helped bring them home. In a compelling narrative, Marlantes weaves riveting accounts of his combat experiences with thoughtful analysis, self-examination, and his readings from Homer to the Mahabharata to Jung. He makes it clear just how poorly prepared our nineteen-year-old warriors mainly men but increasingly women are for the psychological and spiritual aspects of their journey.

About this title

Review:

Amazon Best Books of the Month, September 2011: With unflinching honesty, bestselling author Karl Marlantes captures What It Is Like to Go to War in his compassionate, powerful narrative on Vietnam. By recounting experiences that, outside the arena of war, are horrifying or embarrassing for the soldiers who lived them, Marlantes exposes veterans' self-destructive code of silence as the price for re-entering our society. American pop culture celebrates the warrior spirit, winning the battle, but the reality for soldiers is that “reconciling the moral conduct we are taught...with the brutal acts we do in war has been a problem for warriors of good conscience for centuries.” Marlantes tempers the brutal truths of fear, power games, and courage with a thoughtful prescription for our soldiers’ well-being; caring for our soldiers and their families differently will benefit society as a whole. In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes sets a new standard for understanding the experience of war. --Seira Wilson

About the Author:

A graduate of Yale University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten Air Medals. He is the author of the best-selling and prize-winning Matterhorn.

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0802145922
• ISBN 13: 9780802145925
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272