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

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Overview

Based on the author's National Magazine Award–winning series in Rolling Stone, this New York Times bestseller offers a firsthand account of the first warriors of the current generation to enter the Iraq War.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Wright rode into Iraq on March 20, 2003, with a platoon of First Reconnaissance Battalion Marines-the Marine Corps' special operations unit whose motto is "Swift, Silent, Deadly." These highly trained and highly motivated First Recon Marines were the leading unit of the American-led invasion force. Wright wrote about that 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 and a facile writer. His account is a personality-driven, readable and insightful look at the Iraq War's first month from the Marine grunt's point of view. It jibes with other firsthand reports of the first phase of the Iraqi invasion (including David Zucchino's Thunder Run), showing the unsettling combination of feeble and vicious resistance put up by the Iraqi army, the Fedayeen militiamen and their Syrian allies against American forces bulldozing through towns and cities and into Baghdad. Wright paints compelling portraits of a handful of Marines, most of whom are young, street-smart and dedicated to the business of killing the enemy. As he shows them, the Marines' main problem was trying to sort out civilians from enemy fighters. Wright does not shy away from detailing what happened when the fog of war resulted in the deaths and maimings of innocent Iraqi men, women and children. Nor does he hesitate to describe intimately the few instances in which Marines were killed and wounded. Fortunately, Wright is not exposing the strengths and weaknesses of a new generation of American fighting men, as the misleadingly hyped-up title and subtitle indicate. Instead, he presents a vivid, well-drawn picture of those fighters in action on the front lines in the blitzkrieg-like opening round of the Iraq War. 59,000 first printing. Agent, Richard Abate of ICM. (June 21) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
From The Critics
Following 24 marines of the First Recon, heading into (where else?) Iraq. Expanding on a Rolling Stone feature. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780425224748
  • Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
  • Publication date: 7/1/2008
  • Pages: 384
  • Sales rank: 129,562
  • Product dimensions: 5.90 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 1.20 (d)

Meet the Author

Evan Wright
Evan Wright

Evan Wright is the New York Times–bestselling author of Generation Kill, recently an HBO miniseries, which he co- wrote. A contributing editor to Vanity Fair, he has also written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times, among numerous other publications. He is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards for reporting and profile writing, and for Generation Kill he received a Los Angeles Times Book Award, J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, PEN Literary Award, and a General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award.

Read an Excerpt

Generation Kill


By Evan Wright

Berkley Publishing Group

Copyright © 2005 Evan Wright
All right reserved.

ISBN: 042520040X


Chapter One

MAJOR GENERAL JAMES MATTIS calls the men in First Reconnaissance Battalion "cocky, obnoxious bastards." Recon Marines belong to a distinct military occupational specialty, and there are only about a thousand of them in the entire Marine Corps. They think of themselves, as much as this is possible within the rigid hierarchy of the military, as individualists, as the Marine Corps' cowboys. They evolved as jacks-of-all-trades, trained to move, observe, hunt and kill in any environment-land, sea or air. They are its special forces.

Recon Marines go through much of the same training as do Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces soldiers. They are physical prodigies who can run twelve miles loaded with 150-pound packs, then jump in the ocean and swim several more miles, still wearing their boots and fatigues, and carrying their weapons and packs. They are trained to parachute, scuba dive, snowshoe, mountain climb and rappel from helicopters. Fewer than 2 percent of all Marines who enter in the Corps are selected for Recon training, and of those chosen, more than half wash out. Even those who make it commonly only do so after suffering bodily injury that borders on the grievous, from shattered legs to broken backs.

Recon Marines are also put through Survival Evasion Resistance Escape school (SERE), a secretive training course where Marines, fighter pilots, Navy SEALs and other military personnel in high-risk jobs are held "captive" in a simulated prisoner-of-war camp in which the student inmates are locked in cages, beaten and subjected to psychological torture overseen by military psychiatrists-all with the intent of training them to stand up to enemy captivity. When Gunny Wynn went through SERE, his "captors," playing on his Texas accent, forced him to wear a Ku Klux Klan hood for several days and pull one of his fellow "inmate" Marines, an African American, around on a leash, treating him as a slave. "They'll think of anything to fuck you up in the head," Gunny Wynn says.

Those who make it through Recon training in one piece, which takes several years to cycle all the way through, are by objective standards the best and toughest in the Marine Corps. Traditionally, their mission is highly specialized. Their training is geared toward stealth-sneaking behind enemy lines in teams of four to six men, observing positions and, above all, avoiding contact with hostile forces.

The one thing they are not trained for is to fight from Humvees, maneuvering in convoys, rushing headlong into enemy positions. This is exactly what they will be doing in Iraq. While the vast majority of the troops will reach Baghdad by swinging west onto modern superhighways and driving, largely unopposed, until they reach the outskirts of the Iraqi capital, Colbert's team in First Recon will get there by fighting its way through some of the crummiest, most treacherous parts of Iraq, usually far ahead of all other American forces. By the end of the campaign, Marines will dub their unit "First Suicide Battalion."

Mattis began hatching his plans for First Recon's unorthodox mission back in November. The General is a small man in his mid-fifties who moves and speaks quickly, with a vowel-mashing speech impediment that gives him a sort of folksy charm. A bold thinker, Mattis's favorite expression is "Doctrine is the last refuge of the unimaginative." On the battlefield, his call sign is "Chaos." His plan for the Marines in Iraq would hinge on disregarding sacred tenets of American military doctrine. His goal was not to shield his Marines from chaos, but to embrace it. No unit would embody this daring philosophy more than First Recon.

In the months leading up to the war on Iraq, battles over doctrine and tactics were still raging within the military. The struggle was primarily between the more cautious "Clinton generals" in the Army, who advocated a methodical invasion with a robust force of several hundred thousand, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his acolytes, who argued for unleashing a sort of American blitzkrieg on Iraq, using a much smaller invasion force-one that would rely on speed and mobility more than on firepower. Rumsfeld's interest in "maneuver warfare," as the doctrine that emphasizes mobility over firepower is called, predated invasion planning for Iraq. Ever since becoming Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld had been pushing his vision of a stripped-down, more mobile military force on the Pentagon as part of a sweeping transformation plan.

Mattis and the Marine Corps had been moving in that direction for nearly a decade. The Iraq campaign would showcase the Corps' embrace of maneuver warfare. Mattis envisioned the Marines' role in Iraq as a rush. While the U.S. Army-all-powerful, slow-moving and cautious-planned its methodical, logistically robust movement up a broad, desert highway, Mattis prepared the Marines for an entirely different campaign. After seizing southern oil facilities within the first forty-eight hours of the war, Mattis planned to immediately send First Recon and a force of some 6,000 Marines into a violent assault through Iraq's Fertile Crescent. Their mission would be to seize the most treacherous route to Baghdad-the roughly 185-kilometer-long, canal-laced urban and agricultural corridor from Nasiriyah to Al Kut.

Saddam had viewed this route, with its almost impenetrable terrain of canals, villages, rickety bridges, hidden tar swamps and dense groves of palm trees, as his not-so-secret weapon in bogging down the Americans. Thousands of Saddam loyalists, both Iraqi regulars and foreign jihadi warriors from Syria, Egypt and Palestinian refugee camps, would hunker down in towns and ambush points along the route. They had excavated thousands of bunkers along the main roads, sown mines and propositioned tens of thousands of weapons. When Saddam famously promised to sink the American invaders into a "quagmire," he was probably thinking of the road from Nasiriyah to Al Kut. It was the worst place in Iraq to send an invading army.

Mattis planned to subvert the quagmire strategy Saddam had planned there by throwing out a basic element of military doctrine: His Marines would assault through the planned route and continue moving without pausing to establish rear security. According to conventional wisdom, invading armies take great pains to secure supply lines to their rear, or they perish. In Mattis's plan, the Marines would never stop charging.

The men in First Recon would be his "shock troops." During key phases of the assault, First Recon would race ahead of the already swift-moving Marine battle forces to throw the Iraqis further off balance. Not only would the Marines in First Recon spearhead the invasion on the ground, they would be at the forefront of a grand American experiment in maneuver warfare. Abstract theories of transforming U.S. military doctrine would come down on their shoulders in the form of sleepless nights and driving into bullets and bombs day after day, often with no idea what their objective was. This experiment would succeed in producing an astonishingly fast invasion. It would also result, in the view of some Marines who witnessed the descent of liberated Baghdad into chaos, in a Pyrrhic victory for a conquering force ill-trained and unequipped to impose order on the country it occupied.

Mattis did not reveal his radical plans for First Recon to its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Ferrando, until November 2002, a couple of months before the battalion deployed to the Middle East. Ferrando would later tell me, "Major General Mattis's plan went against all our training and doctrine, but I can't tell a general I don't do windows."

At the time of Ferrando's initial planning meetings with Mattis, the battalion possessed neither Humvees nor the heavy weapons that go with them. To the men in First Recon, trained to swim or parachute into enemy territory in small teams, the concept of fighting in columns of up to seventy vehicles, as they would in Iraq, was entirely new. Many didn't even have military operators' licenses for Humvees. The vehicles had to be scrounged from Marine Corps recycling depots and arrived in poor condition. The Marines were given only a few weeks to practice combat maneuvers in the Humvees, and just a few days to practice firing the heavy weapons mounted on them before the invasion.

What made Mattis's selection of First Recon for this daring role in the campaign even more surprising is that he had other units available to him-specifically, Light Armored Reconnaissance (LAR) battalions-which are trained and equipped to fight through enemy ambushes in specialized armored vehicles. When I later ask Mattis why he put First Recon into this unorthodox role, he falls back on what sounds like romantic palaver: "What I look for in the people I want on the battlefield," he says, "are not specific job titles but courage and initiative."

Mattis apparently had such faith in their skills that the Marines in First Recon were kept in the dark as to the nature of their mission in Iraq. Their commanders never told them they would be leading the way through much of the invasion, serving more or less as guinea pigs in the military's experiment with maneuver warfare. Most of the men in First Recon entered the war under the impression that they had been given Humvees to be used as transport vehicles to get them into position to execute conventional, stealthy recon missions on foot. Few imagined the ambush-hunting role they would play in the war. As one of the Marines in First Recon would later put it, "Bunch of psycho officers sent us into shit we never should have gone into. But we came out okay, dog, even though all we was packing was some sac."



Continues...


Excerpted from Generation Kill by Evan Wright Copyright © 2005 by Evan Wright. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating 4.5
( 155 )

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  • Posted November 4, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    What really went down!

    Generation Kill is a daunting and eye opening account of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I as well as most people in America I'm sure, thought of the invasion to be an easy sweep across the desert country. It was compared to other military invasions, but when you get down to the nitty gritty of it and experience what the individual soldiers experienced you see just how special these men and women are. This book details the atrocities a group of special marines had to go through on their way to Baghdad. The buildup of the characters in important in portraying the events as real. You don't want to see them get hurt. You want to relate to them or put yourselves in their shoes. I have never seen the HBO series, but I don't need to. This book does enough to illustrate the strong will of these men and what it took to take over Iraq and occupy it. A good read would be an understatement.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted September 25, 2009

    Generation Kill - Evan Wright SIA review : MC

    This book i thought was every good. This is a great book about the early war in Iraq. This book that Evan Write wrote and expericed gave so many details. It was one of the best books I've ever read. Honestly I don't know how he did this I would not be able to do this. This book helped me relize how serious the war is in Iraq and who the people are dying for no reason at all just being at the wrong place and the wrong time. This book makes me relize these guys are not friends strangers or bestfriends they become brothers. They have to count on eachother to stay alive. Evan Wright is a brave man. He put his life on the line to go to Iraq to report it and wright this book and show Americans war is no game it's the real deal, inocent people die. It's not like ok evacuate this town so we can bomb the terrorists, no it's if your there you dead. Well i would recommend this book to anyone one of the greastest war books ever!

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 18, 2007

    A Great book

    I found it very hard to put this book down once I started reading it. Actually I have not yet finished with it, I'm stretching it out to last as long as possible. If you want a realistic and accurate impression of the start of the current war in Iraq, this tome is for you. Sometimes happy, sometimes sad and tragic, many times funny. The dialogue is very catchy, for instance you don't say fire when you want to engage the enemy, you say 'light em up'. Also included are many good photos of the cast of characters. It gives you the feeling you almost know these Marines, most just out of their teens. So if you like reading about the Military and Military conflict as I do, I recommend that you buy, beg, borrow or steal this book.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 23, 2004

    Must Read, you will not put it down!

    I've been trying to read first hand accounts of the Iraq War, as many of you have, to experience (through reading only) what the enlisted man went through as a soldier in this war. Politics has totally corrupted the current events genre, and the politics of this war are particulary disrupting. This author, Evan Wright, has NO BONES TO PICK. (the most important thing right now). The reviewer before who gave this book one star is completely incorrect, the platoon never does anything more than complain about the grooming standard, or the commander of first Recon who administors it. The author states they respect him (Ferrando) although they think is going to get them killed through his aggresiveness. However, they do rebel against their company commander (Captain America). I suggest the previous reviewer did not find the book supportive enough of his/her opinions of the war and he/she should stick to accounts of the war by partisans who parade as military historians/reporters such as Ollie North, and not a real non-fiction novel. A real telling of the war would have to include plenty of ammunition against the war, because after all, we do not live in a black and white world, and war is one hell of a policy. The best thing about this book is it's depiction of the soldiers who fight in it. You will not find more vivid and real characters. With those characters, tells the story of a new generation who bring new dimensions to the battlefield such as 'gameboys', rap music, and digital video cameras. MUST READ. I PROMISE.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted July 29, 2011

    Who better qualifed to write such accounts?

    Just a question for the reviewer who does not like books written by vets about their expierences or by reporters writing about them. Just who do you think should write such accounts if not the people who lived them or those who observed them? Who is better qualified?

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  • Posted January 19, 2011

    Great book!

    Very entertaining and well written. I throughly enjoyed reading every single page in this book. It offers an interesting perspective on the war in Iraq.

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  • Posted December 29, 2010

    Highly recommended

    As a former Marine NCO, this book reveals alot about the basic day to day facts of life that Marines endure when deployed over seas. This is one of the few books that actually protrays life in a line unit. Both the good and the bad.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 24, 2010

    An eyeopening novel that is a must read!

    As someone who knew little to nothing about the war in Iraq, I can honestly say that this book was such an eye-opener. Even Wright, a columnist for Rolling Stone, takes us on his journey with the First Recon Battalion Marines to invade Iraq in 2003. These Marines are well trained and highly motivated and, through Wright, we have the opportunity to not only get a first-hand insight to the war, but we get to learn about the men under the uniform.

    What's so great about this book is that the majority of it is fairly unbiased. Wright sticks to the facts and uses his writing skills to paint a picture for the reader. His use of allusions was specifically helpful to me so that I could relate to the events in the book as best as I possibly can.

    I did a little research on the book after reading it and found that some of the soldiers mentioned in the book were outraged, saying Wright's account on what happened was warped and insulting. But after a little more research, I found that most of the soldiers mentioned found the book to be a fairly good account of what happened. They mentioned that Wright may have embellished some parts of the book and taken some things out of context but overall, this book is accurate. But even so, that's something to keep in mind while reading it.

    I think anyone should read this book. Even if you know nothing about the war or have to interest in it, this book is enlightening and it's worth knowing what our citizens our doing overseas. You may not like this book if you don't like to hear the truth. There is brutality in this book, there is friendship, there adventure, there is sorrow. This book will take a toll on your emotions. But every American should know the facts.

    Like I said before, I didn't know much about the war so I hadn't read any other novels to recommend but I did watch some of the HBO mini-series "Generation Kill". It's 7 episodes and based on this book and stays, for the most part, very true to the book. It's a good series and I would highly recommend it - especially if you don't want to read the book!

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  • Posted September 14, 2010

    Excellent book

    I am not one who is usually interested books about the military at all, but my cousin, a marine, told me that this book is a great depiction of what went down in the first soldiers Humvees' as they swept through Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction and Osama. While my cousin wasn't in First Reconnaissance battalion, he said he encourages anyone and everyone to read it, so that they can maybe begin to realize what it was like over there. First Recon is what Evan Wright called the first disposable youth, the generation that was raised on Marilyn Manson and Grand Theft Auto, there was no hesitation for shooting people from these soldiers. They are pretty much left in the dark as to what their assignment is the entire time, but they soon figure out that they are led, more or less, on a suicide mission, but it has to be done, their success is essential to winning the war. As soon as they realize this they craft a nick name for themselves, "First suicide battalion". Evan wrights about all of this very well, adding commentary from the soldiers, and vivid descriptions of everything that is happening at once. Very seldom i find books that i enjoy so much that i read in 3 days, but this was one of them, and i will for sure read it again. 5 out of 5 stars, for sure.

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  • Posted April 16, 2010

    I Also Recommend:

    Did two tours

    Great book, but its still missing something.

    The book Generation Kill is the story of a group of guys in a battalion nicknamed 'First Suicide Battalion.' They are the group that goes in there and stirrs up the bees nest. The book is good in that it captures the reality of the situation and the different soldiers, fromt the trailer park trahs, to the drug addicts, to the Highbrow Harvard and MIT graduates. The book is all about how the soldiers cope and deal with the battles and struggles they go through. It's funny, good humor and Wright goes into good depth the different aspects of war and its not just another fluff piece, but I guess I am just biased against vets writing about their experiences and journalist writing about the vets and their experiences, something becomes lost in translation. But for a journalist, Wright does do a good job, and a good book for a soldiers perspective is also,"Mass Casualties: A Young Medic's True Story of Death, Deception, and Dishonor in Iraq"; maybe like a medical, Army version of.

    But wars are all different. I went there in 2003ish and again in 2006. Both times it felt like different wars and i think it probably changes between people, deployments and bases. Wright's book was good for his time during war and for being a journalist.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 20, 2010

    good book

    i'm not a book reader but am now. easy to read and very absorbing. i couldn't put it down.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted December 8, 2009

    FULL OF ACTION!!!

    Derek Gruis Review

    In the novel, generation kill, Evan Wright writes about a eye-opening, and brutal account on the war in Iraq. He writes about a group of guys and there actions and thoughts in the war.

    The book Generation Kill in about the story of a group of guys in a battalion called First Recon or its nickname "First Suicide Battalion". There the highest most talented group in the military, there the first to go in, the tip of the spear and the last to go out. But in real life there a mixed group of people from white trash trailer park, drug addicted people, to even Harvard students. This book tells about all the battles there in but mostly how they coupe in the war, and try to stay together as a brother hood. Some of the problems they have are how to tell between civilian and from enemy fighters. Many people don't like looking past the fog of war, but Evan Wright leaves no details out of all the death and destruction.

    The book is full of action, brutality and a lot of black humor. But Evan Wright did a good job describing the characters in the book, and how the coupe though to get though the war.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 25, 2009

    Generation Kill-SIA Review M.B

    One of the most powerful books I have ever read. You can't get any closer to war unless you're in it. It leaves nothing out; every image, word, and action that happened is there. All their interactions with the Iraqi citizens, to the fightings, accidental killings, its all there. You can feel the bond these Marines have for each other, and how, whether they like it or not, they do their job. It surprised me how under-equipped the Marines were. Most impressions of the U.S military is that of an invincible giant, but these guys had to fight with weapons that constantly jammed, equipment that they didn't have batteries for, and leaders that were complete and utter morons. This book really doesn't have an opinion on the war; the only opinions voiced are that of the soldiers, and they varied. I highly recommend this book to everyone who wants to know warfare today.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 25, 2009

    Generation Kill- SIA Review: LF

    This book was extremely interesting. The commaraderie between the men almost makes them seem like brothers, going through the good times and the bad together. It shows that Americans don't really know who they are fighting because most of the times in the book the enemy was in street clothes blending in with the civilians. The book also showed that even the United States' Armed Forces which to many seems invincible, has many flaws in the system including leadership and equipment. I believe Evan Wright is one of the best aithors of our time because of the fact that he went to the frontlines with theses men, trained with them, fought with them, and became one of them all to write a book. It is also amazing to see the changing relationship with the Fedayeen went from being on the same side to fighting and trying to kill eachother. Generation Kill was a very interesting book and showed Americans the harsh reality of war and the dangers faced by Americans in Iraq everyday.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 25, 2009

    I Also Recommend:

    Provides Great Insight for the Untold Story of the War in Iraq

    This book can show any reader the true story of the War in Iraq. We are constantly told that the War in Iraq is going well and that it is very organized by our leaders when really, things are awfully falling apart. The soldiers are demoralized and totally brainwashed to be killing machines. This book can equally serve as a prequel to All Quiet on the Western Front. The soldiers in this book are the amped up and confident soliders who eventually become depressed and traumatic as the soldiers are portrayed in All Quiet on the Western Front. Several times in the book, the reader is shocked with the obscure and opposite viewpoint that is presented. At home, we watch this war on television and read about it on the news. That gives you the facts that may very well not be true. Reading this book gives you the pure experience of Iraq. Reading a New York Times article and watching Fox News will not give you the experience of being in Iraq during this war. Furthermore, this book shows how war crushes a person. The soldiers in this book will never be the same again. They are perverted, brainwashed, and have no sense of formality. This is because they are brainwashed by the United States Armed Forces. For anyone who is thinking about serving in the Armed Forces, reading this book will help you decide if you really want to go through what these men went through. They witnessed children's heads being blown off. They witnessed grown men being scared to the point of near tears from the terror of their fellow Iraqis. This book puts the reader in Iraq with the members of the First Recon Unit in the Marines. There is only one way to experience the War in Iraq more than the experience of this book, and that is going to Iraq and jumping right in the middle of battle.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 25, 2009

    War is life-transforming

    Generation Kill, by Evan Wirght, is a war-novel that discusses the lives and tragedies of the soldiers that are fighting in the war in Iraq. Evan Wright was a journalist for the New York Times, who was sent out to Iraq during the War in Iraq, to see what the life of a soldier was like. He observed that the life of a soldier was not just fighting. He saw that most of the time a soldier would either travel in Humvees to reach their destination or to camp out and plan a strategy. Although Wright did not fight, he did get a feel for the war and how intense, stressful, and strategical it is to succeed. The book shows how all different types of men can come together and act as one, when they need each other the most. Their lives depend on one another, for if one man is on duty to protect a certain territory and to protect his fellow soldiers, and he drops his guard, then those mens' lives would have been lost due to him. It demonstrates how a man from a small, quiet hometown can turn into a shooting-obsesssed soldier who accidentally takes the innocent lives of children. Generation Kill demonstrates how war can totally transform the lives of men.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted September 13, 2009

    Great Book

    Generation Kill is a book written by Evan Wright describing his experience being embedded with the First Recon marines pushing to Baghdad in the second Gulf War. Along the way he writes about the realities of officer-enlisted relations, the fog of war, and the imperfection in even modern equipment. The Iraqi army, Fadayeen, and their Syrian allies put up feeble resistance to the First Recon inflicting extremely light casualties. The book is about the realities the modern U.S. soldiers face.
    Evan Wright rides in a Humvee with some of the First Recon marines. Throughout the book he writes about his reactions to getting shot at. He describes the unreal feeling and youthfull sense of invincibility which make it tolerable. He describes two officers hated by the enlisted persons. One acts like a soldier in a war movie who constantly screams on the radio. In one incident he bayonets a subdued prisoner. The other is an officer who seems completely unfit to lead. He constantly makes stupid decisions including calling in artillery to close to his unit.
    "Culturally, these Marines would Be virtually unrecognizable to their forbears in the 'Greatest Generation'". In my opinion this is the most important line in the book. The thing that stands out most in this book is how different these soldiers seem to those from World War Two. They have been raised in a culture with hip-hop, movies, and violent video games.
    This book provides excellent insight into what it's like for the soldiers in Iraq. Readers will get a better idea of what the media means when its reporting event in Iraq. Maybe next time you watch the news you will understand why estimates for enemy casualties are so imprecise and why civilian casualties are so high.

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  • Posted June 18, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    The front lines...

    Amazing book about the beginning of the war in Iraq!

    The book follows the Marine Corps 1st Recon company as they blindly enter war in Iraq, literally not knowing exactly what their mission is or what to really expect.

    I served in the Marine Corps with an infantry battalion, I got out right before the invasion of Iraq. The author Evan Wright, captures what it is to be a Marine and the camaraderie of the Corps perfectly. Wright's descriptions and Marine terms are right on, he did an amazing job with this book.

    1st Recon did an outstanding job over there on the frontlines, considering the chaos among the battalion and some poor leadership they were faced with. They rose to every occasion, admitted their mistakes when they happened and seemed to learn from them.

    The book portrays several officers as buffoons and I don't doubt that, but the book also commends other officers. Having served in the Marine Corps, I saw my share of officers that didnt have a clue and but I knew many, many more that were the epitome of what a good Marine is and were highly respected and looked up to by all.

    Every Marine, every rank should read this book. Just to get a feel of the level of stress they went through, the tough decisions they made at all different levels of rank. There is no training in the world that could have prepared these Marines for what they went through and saw over there.

    Great book, great reading!

    Highly recommended!

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  • Posted May 10, 2009

    more from this reviewer

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    Incredible book on modern combat and the "fog of war."

    This is an incredible book of combat and the "fog of war." The book reads like such great fiction that if he didn't mention it you wouldn't realize that the author was there for the whole thing. The narratives of combat are enthralling, sobering, and thought-provoking. Two of the most fascinating things about this book are: (1) the "fog of war" aspect, where even though these soldiers are incredibly eager to get into combat, when they do they seem disillusioned by the fact that, sometimes, the people that they kill are civilians and they aren't always sure if they killed good guys or bad guys. Wright, without ever trying to do some ham-handed psychoanalysis, shows how all the soldiers deal with the horrors of war. (2) Wright's afterword in the 2008 reprint and, specifically, Corporl Person's criticism of the comments that the actors of the HBO miniseries of the same title that no one, not even actors who are suppose to portray the rigors of battle to American audiences, can never truly understand what it is like to fight unless they've been there. Truly, this is one of the best accounts of war I've read since Black Hawk Down.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 2, 2009

    I Also Recommend:

    Hella Nation

    Fans of Evan Wright's Generation Kill will be happy to learn that he has a new book called Hella Nation. Kirkus Reviews calls the book "Vivid confirmation of the arrival of a major chronicler of those who live on or beyond the margins of the American mainstream." Don't miss Hella Nation, on shelves April 7th.

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