Kaboom

Description

The book the US Army tried to ban... Iraq, late 2007. Lieutenant Matt Gallagher arrives just as US policy shifts from lethal operations to counter-insurgency. He encounters a world where nothing is as it seems. Friends are enemies, reconciliation is war, roads are bombs and silence is deadly. Nothing left to do except 'embrace the suck'......and blog about it. Matt Gallagher's response was to write an on-line journal (called Kaboom) which quickly went viral. Read by thousands of soldiers who recognised its unflinchingly honest portrayal of the real war, as well as high-ranking Pentagon officials and interested parties around the world, Kaboom was shut down by the US Army in June 2008. Now you can read the whole story, based on that brilliant, acerbic, banned blog. Kaboom paints a shockingly original and uncompromising portrait of a savage war the world is still struggling to understand.

Matt Gallagher joined the US Army in 2005 and received a commission in the armoured cavalry. Following a 15-month deployment in Iraq, Gallagher left the army in 2009. He now lives in New York City.

At turns hilarious, maddening and terrifying * Washington Post * Brutally honest * Wired.com * As funny as it is harrowing * Entertainment Weekly * [Kaboom is] surely the Jarhead of the second Gulf war -- Patrick Hennessey, author of "The Junior Officers' Reading Club" Insightful, colorful, and at times irreverent... An excellent snapshot of a junior officer embroiled in a counterinsurgency fight... An exceptionally engaging read * Military Review *