Generation Kill - Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War

Zusatztext “A pungently written combat narrative and a close-range study of a bunch of twentysomething warriors trying to get a handle on who they are.” — Time “Nuanced and grounded in details often overlooked in daily journalistic accounts...A complex portrait of able young men raised on video games and trained as killers.” — The New York Times “A stellar reporting achievement...Think Black Hawk Down  or Michael Herr's Dispatches .”— ottawa Citizen “Shockingly honest.”— Entertainment Weekly “Visceral! sometimes shocking...a brutally honest acount of America's latest generation to experiencethe stark! horrifying realities of warfare.”— Boston Herald “Sidesteps Greatest Generation clichés to find the unexpected—a self-described ‘Marine Corps killer’ who listens to Barry Manilow! a corporal who compares a gunfight to Grand Theft Auto: Vice City .”— The Washington Post Wright wrote about [his] experience in a three-part series in Rolling Stone  that was hailed for its evocative! accurate war reporting. This book! a greatly expanded version of that series! matches its accomplishment. Wright is a perceptive reporter...a personality-driven! readable and insightful look at the Iraq war's first month from the Marine grunt's point of view...compelling portraits...a vivid! well-drawn picture.”— Publishers Weekly “The language is blue! the blood red! and the action explosive. This may be the book of the Iraqi engagement.”— Richmond Times-Dispatch  Informationen zum Autor Evan Wright Klappentext Based on Evan Wright's National Magazine Award-winning story in Rolling Stone, this is the raw, firsthand account of the 2003 Iraq invasion that inspired the HBO® original mini-series. Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the twenty-three Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ended combat since Vietnam. They were a new pop-culture breed of American warrior unrecognizable to their forebears-soldiers raised on hip hop, video games and The Real World. Cocky, brave, headstrong, wary and mostly unprepared for the physical, emotional and moral horrors ahead, the "First Suicide Battalion" would spearhead the blitzkrieg on Iraq, and fight against the hardest resistance Saddam had to offer. Hailed as "one of the best books to come out of the Iraq war"(Financial Times), Generation Kill is the funny, frightening, and profane firsthand account of these remarkable men, of the personal toll of victory, and of the randomness, brutality and camaraderie of a new American War.PROLOGUE It's another Iraqi town, nameless to the Marines racing down the main drag in Humvees, blowing it to pieces. We're flanked on both sides by a jumble of walled, two-story mud-brick buildings, with Iraqi gunmen concealed behind windows, on rooftops and in alleyways, shooting at us with machine guns, AK rifles and the odd rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). Though it's nearly five in the afternoon, a sandstorm has plunged the town into a hellish twilight of murky red dust. Winds howl at fifty miles per hour. The town stinks. Sewers, shattered from a Marine artillery bombardment that ceased moments before we entered, have overflowed, filling the streets with lagoons of human excrement. Flames and smoke pour out of holes blasted through walls of homes and apartment blocks by the Marines' heavy weapons. Bullets, bricks, chunks of buildings, pieces of blown-up light poles and shattered donkey carts splash into the flooded road ahead. The ambush started when the lead vehicle of Second Platoon-the one I ride in-rounded the first corner into the town. There was a mosque on the left, with a brilliant, cobalt-blue dome. Across from this, in the upper window of a three-story building, a machine gun had opened up. Nearly two doz...

Product details

• Authors: Evan Wright
• Publisher: Putnam Publishing Group
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.07.2008
• EAN: 9780425224748
• ISBN: 978-0-425-22474-8
• No. of pages: 370
• Dimensions: 146 mm x 229 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Berkley Books
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Contemporary history (1945 to 1989); Non-fiction book