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Overview

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR:

THE NEW YORK TIMES CHICAGO TRIBUNE

SLATE.COM

THE BOSTON GLOBE THE KANSAS CITY STAR THE PLAIN DEALER (CLEVELAND)

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

WINNER OF THE HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM

It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. It became known as "the surge." Among those called to carry it out were the young,...

See more details below

More About This Book

Overview

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR:

THE NEW YORK TIMES CHICAGO TRIBUNE

SLATE.COM

THE BOSTON GLOBE THE KANSAS CITY STAR THE PLAIN DEALER (CLEVELAND)

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

WINNER OF THE HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN JOURNALISM

It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. It became known as "the surge." Among those called to carry it out were the young, optimistic army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers. About to head to a vicious area of Baghdad, they decided the difference would be them.

Fifteen months later, the soldiers returned home — forever changed. The chronicle of their tour is gripping, devastating, and deeply illuminating for anyone with an interest in human conflict.  With The Good Soldiers, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Finkel has produced an eternal story — not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.

One of the New York Times Book Review's Top 10 Books of 2009
Winner of the 2010 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism

Editorial Reviews

Doug Stanton
Like [Ernie] Pyle, Finkel brilliantly captures the terrors of ordinary men enduring extraordinary circumstances…[in] this ferociously reported, darkly humorous and spellbinding book…Finkel has made art out of a defining moment in history. You will be able to take this book down from the shelf years from now and say: This is what happened. This is what it felt like…Finkel brings the art of storytelling back to the drama of war.
—The New York Times Book Review
Michiko Kakutani
…heart-stopping …Like Michael Herr's Dispatches and Tim O'Brien's Things They Carried, this is a book that captures the surreal horror of war: the experience of blood and violence and occasional moments of humanity that soldiers witness firsthand, and the slide shows of terrible pictures that will continue to play through their heads long after they have left the battlefield…It is Mr. Finkel's accomplishment in this harrowing book that he not only depicts what the Iraq war is like for the soldiers of the 2-16…but also the incalculable ways in which the war bends (or in some cases warps) the remaining arc of their lives.
—The New York Times
More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews
Publishers Weekly
A success story in the headlines, the surge in Iraq was an ordeal of hard fighting and anguished trauma for the American soldiers on the ground, according to this riveting war report. Washington Post correspondent Finkel chronicles the 15-month deployment of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion in Baghdad during 2007 and 2008, when the chaos in Iraq subsided to a manageable uproar. For the 2-16, waning violence still meant wild firefights, nerve-wracking patrols through hostile neighborhoods where every trash pile could hide an IED, and dozens of comrades killed and maimed. At the fraught center of the story is Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, whose dogged can-do optimism—his motto is “It’s all good”—pits itself against declining morale and whispers of mutiny. While vivid and moving, Finkel’s grunt’s-eye view is limited; the soldiers’ perspective is one of constant improvisatory reaction to attacks and crises, and we get little sense of exactly how and why the new American counterinsurgency methods calmed the Iraqi maelstrom. Still, Finkel’s keen firsthand reportage, its grit and impact only heightened by the literary polish of his prose, gives us one of the best accounts yet of the American experience in Iraq. Photos. (Sept.)
Kirkus Reviews
Did the much-vaunted surge of American troops in Iraq work? Yes, said George W. Bush. A soldierly response differed: "I've had enough of this bullshit."So details Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post writer Finkel in this excellent study of soldiers under fire. In January 2007, Bush ordered a surge that involved flooding the Baghdad and other key locations with soldiers to quell anti-American partisan activity. In the field were troops who had seen time in Iraq before, had gone home and been sent back. Some were from a battalion stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., and they had the good fortune to be commanded by a smart West Pointer who had earned his Ranger parachute and had served in the first Gulf War and Afghanistan. His troops affectionately dubbed Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, "the Lost Kauz." The sobriquet proved fitting, as Finkel chronicles, and though Kauzlarich did his best to prevent harm from befalling his charges, he could not stop the IEDs, suicide attacks and stray shots that inevitably followed their movements. The author writes with the you-are-there immediacy of Richard Tregaskis's Guadalcanal Diary (1943), taking the reader into the field, where, against a $100 explosive device, a "$150,000 Humvee might as well have been constructed of lace." Finkel also depicts the gruesome aftermath of such explosions: "All four limbs burned away, bony stumps visible. Superior portion of cranium burned away," reads a battalion doctor's death report. "No further exam possible due to degree of charring." Aspects of the surge, the author writes, were merely rhetorical. Others were unquestionably successful, particularly the reduction in the number of attacks on Americans-successes to bechalked up to the bravery of the men and women under fire, and in no way, Finkel says, to anything happening in Washington. Says Kauz of one action that serves as an epigram to the entire enterprise, "It's fucked up. But you did the right thing."A superb account of the burdens soldiers bear. Agent: Melanie Jackson/Melanie Jackson Agency
The Barnes & Noble Review
Several meticulously researched and insightful books have explored why the United States went to war in Iraq. Works like Thomas E. Ricks's Fiasco and Barton Gellman's Angler have thoroughly examined the hubris, confused thinking, and ever-changing rationales for the 2003 Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation, but no one volume has fully captured the day-to-day grind and lethal reality faced by American troops on the ground in Iraq. Until now.

Pulitzer Prize winner David Finkel, a Washington Post staff writer, spent over a year with an American infantry battalion, known as the 2-16 (whose average age is 19), as they deployed from Fort Riley in Kansas to one of the most dangerous, war-ravaged areas of Baghdad. Carefully detailing the experiences of the 2-16 and its commanding officer, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich, Finkel has crafted a wartime account so visceral and so emotionally wrenching that it will leave many readers stunned.

The Good Soldiers takes a single year-long slice of the war -- April 2007 to April 2008 -- and makes its unifying story the gradual shift of initially optimistic, gung-ho soldiers like Kauzlarich away from an attitude of can-do optimism and eagerness to work with the Iraqis to creeping disillusionment and sometimes outright disgust for the whole Iraq enterprise. Finkel describes the endless meetings Kauzlarich has with local Iraqi leaders, including one possibly involved in killing American troops: a cigarette-smoking sheik who, writes Finkel, "blew smoke from those cigarettes into Kauzlarich's face while asking for money, for guns, for bullets, for a new cell phone, for a car[.]"

What really distinguishes Finkel's hard-to-forget account is his exceptionally specific description of the everyday dangers faced by the 2-16, from sniper fire to incoming mortar shells to the most dangerous weapons of all, IEDs (the "improvised explosive devices" that have become a terrible icon of this war's particular horrors) and the less-well-known EFPs ("explosively formed penetrators"). On April 6, 2007, the 2-16 suffered its first lethal attack when an IED was exploded beneath a Humvee containing PFC Jay Cajimat and four others. "In went the slugs [from the exploding IED] through the armor and into the crew compartment, turning everything in their paths into flying pieces of shrapnel," writes Finkel, "[f]our managed to get out and tumble, bleeding, to the ground, but Cajimat remained in his seat as the Humvee, on fire now, rolled forward, picked up speed, and crashed[.]"

Details of the horrific injuries of the four survivors and what the IED had done to kill Cajimat come via the battalion's doctor: "All four [of Cajimat's] limbs burned away, bony stumps visible. Superior portion of cranium burned away. Remaining portion of torso severely charred." Finkel isn't just interested in how such horrific deaths and injuries impact the battalion, creating a toxic climate of revenge and fear, but also explores their impact on families back home. He shows us burned soldiers recovering Stateside, battling to live with multiple amputations and the resulting mental scars, as family members struggle to maintain hope and find meaning.

After a June 8th EFP explosion, one soldier responded brutally: Sergeant Frank Gietz, who killed seven Iraqis during a firefight the next day, tells Finkel that he wonders whether he'd gone too far and overreacted to the previous day's horror: "It's a thin line between what we're calling acceptable and not acceptable...you're supposed to know when not to cross it. But how do you know? Does the army teach us how to control our emotions? Does the army teach us how to deal with a friend bleeding out in front of you?" In reflections like these, The Good Soldiers makes manifest the daily struggle to make sense of the senseless -- little wonder that these young men suffer under the strain.

Even the optimistic Kauzlarich struggles with the contradictions of trying to win the hearts and minds of a population containing some who would happily see him and his men incinerated. After Kauzlarich barely survives a May 2007 EFP attack and his convoy limps back to base, he's momentarily compelled to deal with his own mixed emotions. During the drive back, an Iraqi girl with "filthy hair and a filthy face...kept waving at the convoy, and now at Kauzlarich himself, [and] he had a decision to make. He stared out his window. He raised his hand slowly. He waved at the f*cking child." In such sardonic moments, as soldiers try to smile at the daily horror, readers see the schizophrenia of wartime.

Given the immense dissonance in the soldiers' daily experience, it comes as little surprise that there is a yawning gap between the official pronouncements of optimism, most of them made by President George W. Bush, and the darker realities on the ground. As Bush praised the effectiveness of Iraq's own security forces, Finkel shows us a training session for Iraqi forces led by U.S. troops who are anything but impressed: "[T]he Iraqi security forces were a joke. Every one of the soldiers knew it." As the Americans showed the Iraqis how to patrol, "one [Iraqi] soldier who was walking backward swiveled around just in time to walk face first into a tree trunk." When instructed to take a knee, another Iraqi "who was clearly too old to be a soldier, and too overweight to be a soldier, instead sprawled on the ground and began plucking at some weeds."

As the number of 2-16's dead and severely injured mounted, both Kauzlarich and his men suffered plummeting morale that would lead to a "countdown" mentality as their deployment ended. The Good Soldiers, in turn, uses the opportunity to explore the disconnect between the home front and the war front, especially how soldiers tuned out the endless political wrangling over the war. Finkel writes at length about the physical and mental scars left behind for the soldiers, and for the families who can't possibly comprehend what they've been through.

This shift in focus to the aftermath of war leads to some of the book's most searing moments, as Kauzlarich visits injured soldiers from his unit in a Texas hospital. The colonel meets one soldier's young wife and mother at bedside, and then turns to greet a soldier blown up by an EFP: "There was so much of Duncan Crookston missing that he didn't seem real. He was half of a body propped up in a full-size bed... He couldn't move because he had nothing left with which to push himself into motion...and he couldn't speak because of the tracheotomy tube that had been inserted into his throat. Every part of him was taped and bandaged because of burns and infections[.] "Just days later, Kauzlarich received an email from Crookston's mother, saying her son had died.

In all,14 members of the 2-16 would be killed in Iraq, and dozens more would find themselves burdened with traumatic injuries and post-traumatic stress. Finkel's book is so valuable because it moves well beyond the mind-numbing statistics and rarefied political debates to explore the war as it's actually fought by young people trying to do what's right amid horror, hopelessness, and grinding fear. The Good Soldiers uniquely portrays the physical and mental toll on these soldiers; there's unlikely to be a more raw and visceral account of its true nature. --Chuck Leddy

Chuck Leddy is a member of the National Book Critics Circle who writes frequently about American history. He reviews books regularly for The Boston Globe, as well as Civil War Times and American History magazines. He is a contributing editor for The Writer magazine.

Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780374165734
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Publication date: 9/15/2009
  • Pages: 304
  • Product dimensions: 6.10 (w) x 9.10 (h) x 1.20 (d)

Meet the Author

David Finkel is a staff writer for The Washington Post, and is also the leader of the Post’s national reporting team. He won the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2006 for a series of stories about U.S.-funded democracy efforts in Yemen. Finkel lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and two daughters. Email him at davidfinkel@thegoodsoldiers.com.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4
( 103 )

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(37)

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(35)

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(14)

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(9)

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(8)

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See All Sort by: Showing 1 – 20 of 103 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted February 20, 2010

    Absolutely Great

    The Good Soldiers is one of the best books I have ever read of any sort. Extremely well written, The Good Soldiers takes the reader on a journey into the Iraq war with such intensity that at times you feel the IED's go off and the bullets fly past your head. David Finkel writes a book that at one minute pulls at your emotions of sorrow and the next has you near ranting at the absurdity of the Iraq war. A must read for anyone trying to get an insight to the US involment in Iraq and what it means to our men and women in war.

    10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted June 4, 2010

    Heartbreaking

    I think most people forget about the war overseas. Understandably, everyone is facing a difficult economy amongst other things, but this book brings us back to reality. As a soldier myself, this book hit so close to home. I have yet to be deployed, so this book made me appreciate, even more, what my fellow soldiers do everyday in Iraq and Afghanistan while I get to be home living a normal life. This book was absolutely heartbreaking, and I cried pretty much the entire time reading it. It's a startling reminder that I think we all need. This book was well written and has amazing insight from soldiers who have lived in the midst of war. Very Powerful.

    7 out of 8 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted February 13, 2010

    I Also Recommend:

    9780618706419

    This book really brings the soldiers to life, the ones who died

    Since I am a military mom this book really moved me and brought these
    young soldiers back to life, or to life. I could not put it down.

    5 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted November 15, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    9780316067591 9780451203939 9780553385281 9780385522267

    In Depth Look at the War in Iraq

    I have recently taken to reading military history books to understand the situation our current world is in. I am 27 and the Middle East situation is my equivalent of the Viatnam War for prior generations. It is difficult to learn the situation our soldiers face, due to media manipulation. This book is a well written account of the "Surge" in Iraq and a;; the dificulties the soldiers faced. The book tells of the mental toll that the war is taking on the young men and women serving in Iraq. The war in the Middle East is nothing like anything we have seen before. The EFP's and IED's are causing a whole new set of problems for the soldiers involved. Finkel was imbedded with the 2-16 and painted a true picture of the true toll this war is taking on those individuals serving in the Middle East theater.

    3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted October 19, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    I Also Recommend:

    9780195368345 9781594201974

    May be the most anti-war yet...

    How does one describe a war? Was there ever a war that seemed like a success? Oh yes--I remember now. The one Bush,Jr declared finished after a month or two.

    Imagine you are lying flat on the hot, dusty surface of a road east of Baghdad, in Rustamiyah. Like an IED, say, or an EFP. (Improvised Explosive Device or Explosively Formed Penetrator) Imagine you take a picture of the world from that viewpoint. I felt Finkel's book allowed us to view the war in Iraq from a similar vantagepoint. A single battalion (the 2-16) experiences "the surge" in this book. We hear a rounded account, from the Lieutenant Colonel (Colonel K) leading the group, to the replacement soldiers for the dead and the wounded. We hear from the wives, the translators, the medalled, the battle-weary. There are no victors.

    It is terrifying, war is. If you want to see what bad is, you can have a look here. As we strive in our lives to achieve, and be the best of what man can be, our soldiers are seeing the worst of what man can be. I don't have words enough to express my sorrow...

    3 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted May 27, 2010

    I Also Recommend:

    9780547391175 9780307266392

    Gritty Wartime Account

    A war correspondent's story detailing the history of an America infantry battalion during the surge in Baghdad. The author takes the reader out on patrol in one of the nastiest neighborhoods in Baghdad and unblinkingly describes what happens when a homemade bomb explodes under a Humvee. The result is a vivid depiction of what war feels like on the ground. The book makes no attempt to tell the story of the war from a higher level, or to place the action described in its pages in any larger wartime context. This is not a comfortable book to read, but it is honest, and I do recommend it.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted May 5, 2010

    The best read on the Iraqi conflict

    Having read more than 8 books on the Iraqi conflict I found Mr.Finkels book to very precise and to the point without needing to add "side bars" to complete the story. Easily the best read thus far on this issue.

    2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted December 20, 2009

    must read for all americans

    the most heart wrenching account of what it is like in war in Iraq
    raw detail of there lives and losses

    2 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted January 27, 2010

    I Also Recommend:

    9780231141901

    Complex

    The war in Iraq is multi faceted. If you are look for more insight into the war in Iraq you should read "Women as Weapons of War: Iraq, Sex and the Media" by well known author and scholar Kelly Oliver.

    1 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 4, 2012

    Like it really was in Iraq

    This is an honest and unvarnished telling of the experiences of an infantry company in the early days of the Iraq war. What these young soldiers saw and did is hard to fully comprehend - what they accomplished is awesome, the sad part is that what they did will probably not last in Iraq.
    Like all real and factual accounts of combat and the soldiers who go through it, this ends up feeling anti-war. As a society we ask a great deal of the people we send to war - they must live with what they say and did the rest of their lives. Bless them.

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  • Posted September 7, 2011

    I Also Recommend:

    9780425223826 9780425241127

    True accounts of the daily life of a soldier

    I loved this book. It really showed the war in Iraq for what it really is rather than what you hear in the news or read in an article. It really puts things into perspective. I would recommend this book to anybody who likes to read the truth and isn't afraid to read things that could potentially make you cry.

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  • Posted May 22, 2011

    Perfection

    This book should be required reading. It is so heart breaking honest and perfectly written. I recommend this book to everyone. I cannot say enough good things about it. You will not be disappointed.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 18, 2011

    Highly Recommend

    This book should be required reading for all Americans. We owe such a debt to those who serve in our military - the least we can do is try to understand what it is they go through on our behalf.

    0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Posted March 24, 2011

    you won't regret this purchase!

    Trust a stranger on this one. It was everything I hoped for from this type of war story.

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  • Posted February 19, 2011

    Gut wrenching account of life and death on the front line against terror in Iraq

    David Finkel puts you in the passenger seat of a Humvee in Iraq. He was encamped with the 6-12 who was assigned to Iraq from 2007-2008. The story is told through the eyes of Ralph Kuzlarich, Army lieutenant colonel, CO of the 6-12 in Bagdad during "George W. Bush's surge." This real life story of soldiers fighting for freedom brough tears to my eyes many times. It gave new meaning to truth, freedom, and American foreign democracy. A must read, RolloRT

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  • Anonymous

    Posted February 7, 2011

    Good on Info

    It was very good on an information basis but as far as the real action is, it was pretty crappy. I enjoyed myself for the first half of the book, then it got sort of old.

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  • Posted January 13, 2011

    False, Sentimental Agitprop

    In "The Good Soldiers", David Finkel gives a verbatim account of dialogue between U.S. pilots and reconnaissance personnel during the now infamous "Collateral Murder" Apache helicopter attack that killed several innocent Iraqis, including two Reuters journalists. The problem is, Finkel's account was written prior to the public release of the video of the killings and, when Finkel's account is compared to that video, calls into serious question Finkel's active "spinning" of reports of the event to align with the U.S. military coverup of what many have called a US "war crime". Read the book if you want to see a journalist at work whose integrity has been severely compromised - and perhaps completely undermined - by his pandering to the needs of his sources (in this case U.S. Army personnel and staff) to create a narrative acceptable to the American public. Finkel's account of the "Collateral Murder" incident - an account which he has publicly defended in spite of ample recorded video and audio evidence of it's falsehood - gives one pause. It seems this author may be willing to outright lie to his readers in order to appeal to our desire to believe that America is sending "Good Soldiers" overseas to fight our battles for us. When the history of the media's support for US military actions is written, David Finkel and "The Good Soldier" will figure prominently; though probably not in a way that Mr. Finkel will like.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 1, 2010

    OUTSTANDING!!

    Great book, helps bring home the war.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 13, 2010

    No text was provided for this review.

  • Anonymous

    Posted December 19, 2011

    No text was provided for this review.

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