What It Is Like to Go to War

What It Is Like to Go to War

by Karl Marlantes
What It Is Like to Go to War

What It Is Like to Go to War

by Karl Marlantes

Hardcover

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Overview

From the author of the award-winning, best-selling novel Matterhorn, comes a brilliant nonfiction book about war

In 1968, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of a platoon of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. Marlantes survived, but like many of his brothers in arms, he has spent the last forty years dealing with his war experience. In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes takes a deeply personal and candid look at what it is like to experience the ordeal of combat, critically examining how we might better prepare our soldiers for war. Marlantes weaves riveting accounts of his combat experiences with thoughtful analysis, self-examination, and his readings—from Homer to The Mahabharata to Jung. He makes it clear just how poorly prepared our nineteen-year-old warriors are for the psychological and spiritual aspects of the journey.

Just as Matterhorn is already being acclaimed as acclaimed as a classic of war literature, What It Is Like to Go to War is set to become required reading for anyone—soldier or civilian—interested in this visceral and all too essential part of the human experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780802119926
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date: 08/30/2011
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 904,007
Product dimensions: 8.32(w) x 5.86(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

About The Author
A graduate of Yale University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. He is the author of Matterhorn, which won numerous prizes, including the William E. Colby Award given by the Pritzker Military Library, the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the 2011 Indies' Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year, and the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation's James Webb Award for Distinguished Fiction. He lives in rural Washington.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 Temple of Mars 1

2 Killing 6

3 Guilt 48

4 Numbness and Violence 61

5 The Enemy Within 80

6 Lying 114

7 Loyalty 134

8 Heroism 155

9 Home 176

10 The Club 208

11 Relating to Mars 220

Afterword 255

Acknowledgments 257

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