The Good Soldiers by Pulitizer Prize-winning reporter David Finkel tells the true and harrowing story of a U.S. battalion's deployment to an Iraqi town during the "surge." The author was embedded for eight months with the 2-16 soldiers out of Fort Riley and recounts their experiences in the dusty, but dangerous town of Rustamiya, outside the relative safety of Baghdad's Green Zone.
David Finkel is a Washington Post writer and knows how to report what he sees. What he saw in Iraq was the daily assault upon these good soldiers of boredom, outrage, hope, fear, substance abuse, despair and grave bodily injury. Finkel places quotes by President G.W. Bush at the beginning of each chapter to remind us of the administration's mindset about the war's progress, letting these statements stand in contrast to what the soldiers actually experienced and endured.
Fiction author Geraldine Brooks comments that The Good Soldiers is "an incandescent and profoundly moving book: powerful, intense, enraging. This may be the best book on war since the Iliad." Bernardsville Public Library's book group, Memoirs & Coffee, will discuss The Good Soldiers next Tuesday, April 26th, at 10:30 a.m. in the Community Room. Copies of the book are now available at the library. New members are welcome to attend.
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