“The Lonely Soldier” by Helen Benedict

The Lonely Soldier Helen Benedict If you still harbor any starry-eyed illusions about the Iraq war as a noble endeavor, or of the military as a welcoming place for women, this book will dispel them. Focusing largely on the experiences of a fairly diverse group (two white, one Mexican-American, one African-American, one Native American, all, […]

“American Sniper” by Chris Kyle

American Sniper Chris Kyle “We were slaughtering them,” brags Chris Kyle, America’s most prolific sniper, in his bestselling memoir that spawned the hit movie directed by Clint Eastwood. The “them” here refers to Iraqi insurgents, of whom Kyle killed close to 200, something he attributes largely to luck and being in the right place at […]

“Blackwater” by Jeremy Scahill

“Blackwater” Jeremy Scahill With Erik Prince’s recent op-ed in the NYT arguing in favor of largely turning the US presence in Afghanistan over to private military contractors, now seems like a good time to review Jeremy Scahill’s “Blackwater,” a detailed expose of Blackwater’s (now merged with Triple Canopy and known as Academi) actions during the […]

“Black Hawk Down” by Mark Bowden

Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden How much good can you do with the point of a gun? This is the question that, at its heart, “Black Hawk Down” asks–and answers. The answer? Only so much. “Black Hawk Down” covers, with moment-by-moment thoroughness, the 1993 battle of Mogadishu, when a small group of US Rangers […]

“Sniper One” by Dan Mills

“For once,” Dan Mills says about the news that his battalion was being sent to Iraq, “we were going somewhere interesting.” A professional soldier in his 30s and the head of his battalion’s sniper group, Mills had been bored stiff by a series of tours in tedious places like Northern Ireland and Bosnia. But finally, […]

“War Journal” by Richard Engel

In this eye-witness account of the events in Iraq from 2003 to 2008, Richard Engel, NBC correspondent for the Middle East, repeatedly asks the question that others should have been asking a lot earlier and a lot louder: namely, what the heck was the US doing there? This is a personal account of Engel’s experiences […]

“Consequence: A Memoir” by Eric Fair

Eric Fair always wanted to protect and serve. He dreamed of being a police officer, or maybe a Presbyterian minister. Instead he ended up running an interrogation booth in Abu Ghraib. “Consequence” tells the story of how, through a series of life choices that often seemed sensible at the time, Fair found himself conducting “enhanced […]