Next Time They'll Come to Count the Dead: War and Survival in South Sudan

by Nick Turse

Overview

A dramatic, true story of men and women trapped in the grip of war, Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead is modern crisis reporting at its best.

For six weeks in the Spring of 2015, award-winning journalist Nick Turse traveled on foot as well as by car, SUV, and helicopter around war-torn South Sudan talking to military officers and child soldiers, United Nations officials and humanitarian workers, civil servants, civil society activists, and internally displaced persons–people whose lives had been blown apart by a ceaseless conflict there. In fast-paced and dramatic fashion, Turse reveals the harsh reality of modern warfare in the developing world and the ways people manage to survive the unimaginable.

Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead isn’t about combat, it’s about the human condition, about ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances, about death, life, and the crimes of war in the newest nation on earth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781608466481
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Series:	Dispatch Books
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An award-winning investigative journalist and the author of the widely hailed, bestselling book Kill Anything That Moves, he has reported from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa and his pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Intercept, and regularly at TomDispatch.

Editorial Reviews

"'Horror shows are plentiful in a country at war,' Nick Turse writes in this painful, chilling account of the rapid descent of South Sudan from the birth of a new country, resurrected from the ashes of bitter conflict, to utter despair and possible genocide. 'But some are grimmer than others,' he adds, finding them wherever he turns in this vivid, gripping account of inhuman cruelty, laced with rays of hope and courage and dignity amidst the horrors.”
—Noam Chomsky

"Nick Turse, alone among war reporters, is the wandering scribe of war crimes. Reading Turse will turn your view of war upside down. In South Sudan, troops run amok, desperate civilians shelter in squalid U.N. camps, international officials fail to record evidence of atrocities, while military and political bigwigs battle for power at the cost of their country. No glory here in Turse’s pages, but the clear voices of people caught up in this fruitless cruelty, speaking for themselves."
—Ann Jones, author of They Were Soldiers

“The average journalist follows the herd of others. A bold one like Nick Turse goes to where the herd isn’t. His searing reporting in this book brings alive the suffering of a country that the United States, midwife to its birth, has largely forgotten.”
—Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost

"Turse gives a sobering account of the horrific crimes against ordinary people that define South Sudan's conflict. He shows how efforts to count the dead, investigate the crimes, and bring perpetrators to justice have so far failed. His compelling account reminds us why accountability is both urgent and necessary."
—Kenneth Roth, executive director, Human Rights Watch


Praise for Tomorrow’s Battlefield:

"Gripping and meticulous, Nick Turse’s reporting on Africa sheds much-needed light on shadowy missions the U.S. military would rather keep secret. His investigations of U.S. military missions in Africa in Tomorrow’s Battlefield reveal a secret war with grave implications for Africans and Americans, alike."
—Glenn Greenwald

"In the first book length account of AFRICOM’s operations, Nick Turse chronicles how in a very short time, Africa went from the margins of US foreign policy—to be not just the warzone of tomorrow, but of today."
—Sean Jacobs, international affairs faculty at The New School and founder of Africa is a Country

"A dogged and intrepid journalist who won't take 'no comment' for an answer, Nick Turse has done a fantastic job of exposing the U.S. military's expansion into Africa and the proliferation of its secret missions on the continent."
—Craig Whitlock, Pentagon correspondent, Washington Post

From the Publisher