Good Soldiers [Hardcover]

"A superb account of the burdens soldiers bear." (Kirkus Reviews 20091011)

"Finkel brilliantly captures the terrors of ordinary men enduring extraordinary circumstances...[he] has made art out of a defining moment in history. You will be able to take this book down from the shelf years from now and say: This is what happened. This is what it felt like...he gives unforgettable voice to the men who fought and lived -- and to those who did not -- and whose voices we otherwise might not have heard. (New York Times Sunday Book Review 20091017)

"This is a book that captures the surreal horror of war: the experience of blood and violence and occasional moments of humanity that soldiers witness first-hand, and the slide shows of terrible pictures that will continue to play through their heads long after they have left the battlefield." (National Post 20091009)

"Finkel has made art out of a defining moment in history. You will be able to take this book down from the shelf years from now and say: 'This is what happened. This is what it felt like.'" (Doug Stanton New York Times 20091108)

"It's a lesson on framing, the way the big picture is most starkly displayed by the telling detail, in Finkel's superb and terrifying account of an Army battalion's 15-month stint in an especially ugly corner of Baghdad, it's the taste of blood. And not your own." (Toronto Star 20090930)

"Let me be direct. The Good Soldiers by David Finkel is the most honest, most painful, and most brilliantly rendered account of modern war I've ever read. I got no exercise at all the day I gulped down its 284 riveting pages." (Daniel Okrent Fortune 20091001)

"Over and over, I cried. I endured nightmares. I have read hundreds of books about war and almost two dozen books about the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of them affected me. But none has affected me as deeply as The Good Soldiers." (Steve Weinberg Kansas City Star 20091002)

"Heart-stopping...captures the surreal horror of war." (Michiko Kakutani New York Times 20091003)

"A whole generation of these men will (God willing) be coming home, and The Good Soldiers is as good a guide as I can imagine to who they'll be when they get here." (Devin Friedman GQ 20091004)

"[A] new classic...the reader cannot get enough...As a compelling read, The Good Soldiers is all good." (J. Ford Huffman Military Times 20090901)

"David Finkel has written the most unforgettable book of the Iraq War, a masterpiece that will far outlast the fighting." (David Maraniss 20090901)

"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" and "March" 20090901)

"This is the best account I have read of the life of one unit in the Iraq War. It is closely observed, carefully recorded, and beautifully written. David Finkel doesn't just take you into the lives of our soldiers, he takes you deep into their nightmares." (Thomas E. Ricks, author of "Fiasco" and "The Gamble" 20090901)

"Brilliant, heartbreaking, deeply true. The Good Soldiers offers the most intimate view of life and death in a twenty-first-century combat unit I have ever read. Unsparing, unflinching, and, at times, unbearable." (Rick Atkinson, author of "An Army at Dawn" and "The Day of Battle" 20090901)

"This is the finest book yet written on the platoon-level combat of the Iraq war...Unforgettable -- raw, moving, and rendered with literary contro...No one who reads this book will soon forget its imagery, words, or characters." (Steve Coll, author of "Ghost Wars" 20091010)

"Vivid and moving...Finkel's keen firsthand reportage, its grit and impact only heightened by the literary polish of his prose, gives us one of the best accounts yet of the American experience in Iraq." (Publishers Weekly )

An eternal tale-not just of the Iraq War but of all wars, for all time.

It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, U.S. President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. He called it the surge. "Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences," he told a skeptical nation.

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. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter David Finkel was with them in Bagdad, and almost every grueling step of the way.

What was the true story of the surge? And was it really a success? Those are the questions he grapples with in his remarkable report from the front-lines. Combining the action of Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down with the literary brio of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, The Good Soldiers is an unforgettable work of reportage. And in telling the story of these good soldiers, the heroes and the ruined, David Finkel has also produced an eternal tale-not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.

(20091011)