Tag Archives: Iraq
** Shade it Black by Jess Goodell
With its awkward structure and bifurcated focus, Shade it Black is far from perfect — but I found it very interesting nevertheless. It is a memoir by a woman, newly graduated from high school, who enlists as her Marine and … Continue reading
Filed under True story
*** You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
This one is going straight to the “Books of the Month” list. You Know When the Men Are Gone is a series of interlocking stories about the wives of soldiers from Fort Hood that are deployed to Iraq. The stories … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
The Lonely Soldier by Helen Benedict
The Lonely Soldier tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq, a topic that could be very interesting. But right from the start the author hammers out statistics that are had to believe, such as 90% of female … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
The Good Soldiers by David Finkel
The Good Soldiers is a story of “the surge,” which was supposed to pacify Iraq, told from the perspective of an infantry battalion from Kansas. The narrative is as depressing, brutal, and gruesome as the real thing, I imagine, and … Continue reading
Filed under Non fiction
Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth
A team of archaeologists in present-day Iraq, but at the time a very decayed and corrupt Ottoman Empire, are struggling to make important discoveries as they are threatened by the construction of a railroad line, the start of WWI, and … Continue reading
Filed under New fiction
Joker One by Donovan Campbell
This Princeton graduate won’t win a literary award (after all my complaints about ghost writers I can’t really fault him for not using one, can I?) but his story, Joker One, is well worth reading. Campbell spent seven months in … Continue reading
Filed under True story
