Last One In
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Jimmy Stephens makes the worst mistake of his career as a gossip columnist when he wrongly accuses a big star of cheating on his wife. With lawsuits pending, Jimmy's imperious new editor blackmails him into taking the place of the paper's injured front-line war correspondent. Shipped off to the desert and embedded with a group of foulmouthed but fraternal Marines, Jimmy provides a bewildered but unfiltered view of the invasion of Iraq that is alternately hair-raising, hilarious, and heartbreaking.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kulish, a journalist who was embedded with a Marine attack-helicopter unit for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, draws on that experience for this satirical debut novel. Facing dismissal over an erroneous story of celebrity infidelity, New York Daily Herald gossip reporter Jimmy Stephens is given a second chance. The country is about to go to war in Iraq, and the paper's veteran war correspondent is laid up after being hit by a delivery truck. To save his job, a reluctant and clueless Jimmy assumes the position. In Kuwait, Stephens joins a Marine infantry company and hitches a ride in a Humvee with four typical Marines: profane and irreverent, but thoroughly professional when necessary. The tough Marines, of course, tease the "sissy-ass civilian reporter," but sharing privation and sporadic combat affect Stephens and his Marine companions in unexpected ways. Though the war has changed dramatically since the initial invasion lending a strangely dated feeling to the narrative a steady flow of Yossarian-flavored absurdity ("We're the pro-Iraqi forces, and the anti-Iraqi forces are the Iraqis") smoothes out the bumps in Stephens's odyssey.
