What It Is Like to Go to War
by Karl Marlantes
Buy on Amazon"A precisely crafted and bracingly honest" memoir of war and its aftershocks from the New York Times–bestselling author of Matterhorn ( The Atlantic). In 1968, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. In his thirteen-month tour he saw intense combat, killing the enemy and watching friends die. Marlantes survived, but like many of his brothers in arms, he has spent the last forty years dealing with his experiences. In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes takes a candid look at these experiences and critically examines how we might better prepare young soldiers for war.…
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"After I finish the pile on my night stand, I may take up Karl Marlantes’s “What It Is Like to Go to War.” My curiosity about that question has animated a great deal of my own research and writing about the Civil War."
By the Book: Drew Gilpin Faust · nytimes.com