What It Is Like to Go to War
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3.7 • 33 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
"A precisely crafted and bracingly honest" memoir of war and its aftershocks from the New York Times–bestselling author of Matterhorn (The Atlantic).
In 1968, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. In his thirteen-month tour he saw intense combat, killing the enemy and watching friends die. Marlantes survived, but like many of his brothers in arms, he has spent the last forty years dealing with his experiences.
In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes takes a candid look at these experiences and critically examines how we might better prepare young soldiers for war. In the past, warriors were prepared for battle by ritual, religion, and literature—which also helped bring them home. While contemplating ancient works from Homer to the Mahabharata, Marlantes writes of the daily contradictions modern warriors are subject to, of being haunted by the face of a young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters, and of how he finally found a way to make peace with his past. Through it all, he demonstrates just how poorly prepared our nineteen-year-old warriors are for the psychological and spiritual aspects of the journey.
In this memoir, the New York Times–bestselling author of Matterhorn offers "a well-crafted and forcefully argued work that contains fresh and important insights into what it's like to be in a war and what it does to the human psyche" (The Washington Post).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Marlantes, author of the highly acclaimed novel Matterhorn, reflects in this wrenchingly honest memoir on his time in Vietnam: what it means to go into the combat zone and kill and, most importantly, what it means to truly come home. After graduating from Yale, Marlantes attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. But not wanting to hide behind privilege while others fought in his place, he left Oxford in 1967 to ship out to Vietnam as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps. He eschews straight chronology for a blend of in-country reporting and the paradoxical sense of both fear and exhilaration a soldier feels during war. Most importantly, Marlantes underscores the need for returning veterans to be counseled properly; an 18-year-old cannot "kill someone and contain it in a healthy way." Digging as deeply into his own life as he does into the larger sociological and moral issues, Marlantes presents a riveting, powerfully written account of how, after being taught to kill, he learned to deal with the aftermath. Citing a Navajo tale of two warriors who returned home to find their people feared them until they learned to sing about their experience, Marlantes learns the lesson, concluding, "This book is my song,"
Customer Reviews
Shockingly Spiritual and Introspective
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading this. Maybe a written version of movies like, “Platoon” or “We Were Soldiers” (which I know was a book first as well), where the accounts of war a described in explicit, gory detail. While it certainly and unabashedly does entail those aspects as any book about war will, it delves deeper into the spiritual and emotional aspects of combat from a very pragmatic perspective. In addition, it addresses the issues the warrior wages within himself as when he returns from combat and tries to reintegrate into the normal world. This was very helpful for someone like me who, having not been to war, has friends and relatives who have; including my grandfather who was on the USS Tennessee, the ship next to the Arizona during the attack on Pear Harbor. Moreover, in my career as a flight nurse, it has helped me draw parallels between being in a position of seeing and having to intervene upon life and death situations almost every day I go to work, and how to go back to living a “normal” life between shifts and interact with people who have no idea what I’m exposed to. This, I know is a microcosm at least an order of magnitude less than that of combat, as I am never in a position to have to kill or be killed, but it certainly does address the spiritual and emotional tug-of-war between peaks of intensity that can be found in emergency medical services and everyday life. This book has so much more than what I’m describing so you’ll just have to… read it. Amazing and harrowing stuff.
Can’t download
I recently purchased this book and have not been able to read it due to the download not working. When I enter the “books” app after purchasing the book, the download started nicely but then around 2% stopped and hasn’t moved since. I at first thought it was my connection but the other books I have downloaded fine.