The Good Soldiers

Description

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 listening 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. What is the true story of the surge? And was it really a success? Those are the questions that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter David Finkel grapples with in his remarkable report from the front lines. He was with Battalion 2-16 in Baghdad almost every gruelling step of the way. The Good Soldiers is an unforgettable work of reportage. And in telling the story of these good soldiers, the heroes and the ruined, Finkel has also produced an eternal tale - not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.

David Finkel is the national enterprise editor of The Washington Post. He joined the Post in 1990 and has worked for the paper's national, foreign, and magazine staffs. He has reported from Africa, Asia, Central America, Europe, and throughout the United States, and was part of the Post's war coverage in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Kosovo. Among Finkel's journalism honours are a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting in 2006 for a series of stories about US-funded democracy efforts in Yemen. He has been a Pulitzer finalist three other times, for both explanatory reporting and feature writing.

'From a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer at the height of his powers comes an incandescent and profoundly moving book: powerful, intense, enraging. This may be the best book on war since the Iliad.' - Geraldine Brooks, author of People of the Book.