Generation Kill

Generation Kill
by Evan Wright

Generation Kill
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Book Summary Information

Author: Evan Wright
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-07-01
ISBN: 0425224740
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Berkley Trade

Book Reviews of Generation Kill

Book Review: Stunning Read
Summary: 5 Stars

To sum it up in a brief sentence; I've never read a book like it. Every page, paragraph, sentence and word I was hooked from start to finish. Evan Wright is a truly gifted writer that managed to capture the raw brutality of War and the mixture of emotions that come with it to create a book that taught you so much whilst entertaining you at the very same time. Laughter, horror and raw sadness were just some of the emotions I was put through as a result of reading this book. In its context, I struggle to find a flaw with this perfectly crafted, deeply honest account of Wrights time accompanying the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps during the invasion of Iraq.

Initially released as a three part series featured in Rolling Stone magazine, author Evan Wright was placed with Recon Marines to follow them and take an account of the invasion of Iraq. As with most journalists, you would expect Wright to be placed at the back out of the way of any danger, but during the entire book, Wright is smack bang in the middle of the war which has undoubtedly won him the respect he gained. Throughout the time Wright spends with the Marines, he reveals a purely brutal atmosphere that is both comical and frightening at the same time.

The team Wright spends most of his travelling time with in a Humvee consist of Sergeant Brad `Iceman' Colbert, Corporal Josh Ray Person, Corporal Harold James Trombley and Corporal Gabe Garza (switched a short time after with Corporal Walt Hasser). Although these are the main team, there are a lot more secondary characters mentioned in the book drawn from Second Platoon and some come across a bit more interesting. Sergeant Antonio Espera or First Lieutenant Nathaniel `Nate' Fick are the two more interesting secondary characters whose parts I really enjoyed reading. The incompetence of the higher ups in Second Platoon comes across quite shockingly to consider exactly how people, with such blatant lack of ability, can reach a position to be in command of an entire fleet.

When you first start reading, it's fairly easy to misunderstand the humour and actions of the Marines as being cold, callous and uncaring and you can very easily mistake that as being the Marines core personality. However, when you read on, Wright reveals that the dark humour or the supposed uncaring nature of the Marines is simply a coping measure as a way of dealing with the sheer horror of seeing mangled corpses of Iraqi soldiers, civilians and even in some cases children. The banter between Marines is as laugh out loud funny as it is childish as it almost entirely consists of racial, gay or some other kind of insult that in the civilian world would have no place.

War is a horrible thing. I don't think anyone would deny that. And in this book Evan Wright gives the anti-war protestors some ammo they could use to enforce their cause, but he also presents a lighter side that you would really struggle to sincerely understand unless you were in the position yourself. He presents the beautiful camaraderie formed between the Marines who, in some senses, through the time spent with Wright, have formed a kind of unbreakable brotherhood that is only strengthened by the horrors that surround them. The stories told in this book are of sincerely good men. They're men who find themselves in a truly alien situation that no amount of training and rules can really prepare them for. You understand their humanity and their hatred. You understand their purposes and their ideologies. And you understand that regardless of what we think of the war, they're over there putting their lives on the line and they deserve praise and respect for the job they're doing, and Wright deserves praise for telling their story.

Brilliant book. Buy it. Or give the HBO Mini-series a watch as it stays very close to the story told in the book.

Summary of Generation Kill

Read Evan Wright's posts on the Penguin Blog.

Read about the Penguin Group (USA) partnership with HBO in support of the Generation Kill Troop Drive here.

They were called a generation without heroes.
Then they were called upon to be heroes.

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.

Now a major HBO event, Generation Kill is the national bestselling book based on the National Magazine Award- winning story in Rolling Stone. It 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.

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