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Written by Dexter Filkins

• Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
• Publisher: Knopf
• On Sale: September 16, 2008
• Price: $25.00
• ISBN: 978-0-307-26639-2 (0-307-26639-7)

about this book

From the front lines of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, a searing, unforgettable book that captures the human essence of the greatest conflict of our time.

Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, the prizewinning New York Times correspondent whose work was hailed by David Halberstam as “reporting of the highest quality imaginable,” we witness the remarkable chain of events that began with the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, continued with the attacks of 9/11, and moved on to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Filkins’s narrative moves across a vast and various landscape of amazing characters and astonishing scenes: deserts, mountains, and streets of carnage; a public amputation performed by Taliban; children frolicking in minefields; skies streaked white by the contrails of B-52s; a night’s sleep in the rubble of Ground Zero.

We embark on a foot patrol through the shadowy streets of Ramadi, venture into a torture chamber run by Saddam Hussein. We go into the homes of suicide bombers and into street-to-street fighting with a battalion of marines. We meet Iraqi insurgents, an American captain who loses a quarter of his men in eight days, and a young soldier from Georgia on a rooftop at midnight reminiscing about his girlfriend back home. A car bomb explodes, bullets fly, and a mother cradles her blinded son.

Like no other book, The Forever War allows us a visceral understanding of today’s battlefields and of the experiences of the people on the ground, warriors and innocents alike. It is a brilliant, fearless work, not just about America’s wars after 9/11, but ultimately about the nature of war itself.

“Dexter Filkins's The Forever War is the best piece of war journalism I've ever read. He paints a portrait of war that is so nuanced, so filled with absurdities and heartbreak and unexpected heroes and villains, that it makes most of what we see and hear about Iraq and Afghanistan seem shrill and two-dimensional by comparison. And yet, as tragic as the events he describes are, the book manages to be a thing of towering beauty.”—Dave Eggers (Guardian Best Books of the Year)

“Splendid.” —Washington Post Book World Best Nonfiction of 2008

“Easily the best account yet to come out of life in occupied Iraq and rapidly deteriorating Afghanistan.” —Time Out New York Best Books of 2008

“The gaping wounds of Iraq and Afghanistan have produced a torrent of words, but no single volume so far has the precision and power of The Forever War . . . Filkins’ set pieces have the absolute clarity of lightning flashes that burn away the fog of war.” —Time Best Nonfiction Books of 2008

“Not since Michael Herr in Dispatches . . . has a reporter written as vividly about combat as Filkins does from Afghanistan and Iraq.” —USA Today 10 Best Books of 2008

“Dexter Filkins is the preeminent war correspondent of my generation, fearless, compassionate, and brutally honest. In an age of know-it-all pundits and preening bloggers, Filkins is the real thing. He's been everywhere, he's seen everything, and, miraculously, he's lived to tell the tale. The Forever War is his astonishing story. It is one of the best books about war that I have ever read. It will stay with me forever.”—Jeffrey Goldberg, author of Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide

“Dexter Filkins has seen the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan; he has stood in the ruins of the World Trade Center; he has been in the heat of battle in Iraq; indeed, no one else has been closer to the action than this courageous and thoughtful observer. This is a sensational book in the best sense.”—Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

“The Forever War is already a classic—it has the timeless feel of all great war literature. A lot has been written about Iraq and Afghanistan, but no one has seen as much, survived as much, and registered the horror with such sad eloquence as Dexter Filkins. His combination of courage and sensitivity is so rare that books like his come along only once every major war. This one is ours.” —George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq

“Filkins . . . is widely regarded as among the finest war correspondents of this generation. His richly textured book . . . does not editorialize—a welcome change from the punditry that shapes most writing from these war zones.” —Publishers Weekly

“A . . . litany of war’s savage absurdity . . . Filkins writes with candor and clarity . . . Sharing his deeply humbling, transforming journey, the author tempers numbing details of slaughter and carnage with affecting human stories.”—Kirkus

“Filkins . . . marshals his broad experience to present a wide-ranging view of this struggle, told through a series of intense, vivid, and startling vignettes. . . . A portrait of the difficulty, complexity, and savagery of a conflict that will be with us for some time.”—Jay Freeman, Booklist

“The Forever War . . . promises to be one of the year’s major books on America’s war on terror. Read it and weep—for Afghanistan, for Iraq, and for anyone who has had to witness such devastation.”—Sarah Gold, “Notes from the Bookroom”

“Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War, brutally intimate, compassionate, often poetic accounts of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, is destined to become a classic.”—Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

“Unvarnished and unforgettable.”—Esquire

“Filkins is a beautiful writer, which only serves to enhance the enormous sadness of his story.”—Gawker

“In his extraordinary—and extraordinarily important—book, [Dexter] Filkins does not rush to condemn; his is an impeccably balanced story of hope and despair. Through a series of surreal and jaw-dropping vignettes from Afghanistan and Iraq, each written with considerable literary flare, The Forever War takes us to the people affected by these wars in a way no other account has quite managed . . . The Forever War is indispensible: a lesson in reporting.”—James Grant, The Herald

“Unflinching.”—Matt Haber, The New York Observer

"Stunning...it is not facetious to speak of work like that of Dexter Filkins as defining the 'culture' of a war...This unforgettable narrative [represents]...a haunting spiritual witness that will make this volume a part of this awful war's history." —Robert Stone, on the front page of The New York Times Book Review

“Gut-wrenching and touching . . . Mr. Filkins’s stories are those of a writer willing to endure hardship, danger and anguish to paint an accurate picture of war for the American public . . . His prose is as blunt as it is powerful.”—Lee H. Hamilton, The New York Times

“The Forever War is first and foremost a work of detail: an object lesson in how to notice.” —Leon Nayfakh, The New York Observer

“[Filkins is] an almost absurdly brave war correspondent . . . his brilliant, sad, unique book . . . may be the most readable book about Iraq. It’s certainly one of the most artful. . . We’re the better for it.” —Hilary Frey, The New York Observer

“Splendid . . . it shines as a work of literature, illuminating the human cost of war. Filkins’s singular skill . . . rests in showing how war shatters lives and how some people manage to survive amid fear, violence, intrigue and chaos . . . These stories are accurate but not antiseptic, detached but not uncaring. And they force the reader to reflect on how fragile civilization is and how fortunate we Americans are.” —Bing West, The Washington Post

“Filkins . . . is a courageous reporter and an original writer . . . [He] has the instincts of a short story writer . . . Locations and characters change, but the narrative holds together through the power of his writing . . . The Forever War is an astonishingly good book.” —Evan Wright, LA Weekly

“Addictive . . . [Filkins is] a master of the moment, of the concrete, of texture; where others try to explain, he wants you to know what being there feels like . . . He is a war reporter who has finally freed himself from the long shadow of Michael Herr . . . Filkins’s personality is very different. In his writing you sense a man striving to hold onto his decency in the midst of a slaughter that would drive most of us deep into cynicism . . . I couldn’t put this book down.” —Craig Seligman, Bloomberg

“Extraordinary . . . if what Michael Herr brought back from Vietnam in Dispatches was a sort of Jackson Pollock—streaks of blood, trickles of dread, splattershot of hard rock and harder drugs—The Forever War is like a pointillist Seurat, a neo-Impressionist juxtaposition of spots of pure color with black holes and open wounds.” —John Leonard, Harper’s

“Dexter Filkins . . . is well on his way to becoming the pre-eminent war reporter of this tumultuous era . . . His understated prose offers a stiletto-sharp account of places he’s gone and people he’s met.” —John Marshall, Seattle Post Intelligencer

“The definitive—and heartbreakingly humanizing—report from the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . The Forever War is the most affecting account of how all this madness came to be. Which means it’s also the most effective, since madness cannot be explained, only felt—and anyone who reads this book is going to feel it in the marrow . . . Few war reporters can match Filkins’s ambition and fortitude; even fewer possess his descriptive powers . . . The Forever War [is] about all wars, everywhere—and a book that will be read fifty years from now.” —Andrew Corsello, GQ

“A kaleidoscope of images and intensity . . . electrifying vignettes . . . fleeting moments of humanity in countries convulsed by violence . . . It is written in finely honed bursts of vibrant color that capture the peculiar culture of the war . . . It is a raw and riveting account . . . Filkins’s book . . . is designed to take us on a ride. It is a ride into the heart-thumping world of utter destruction and combat . . . his honesty in portraying the war implicitly exposes the hollowness of the platitudes used in Washington to defend it.” —Chris Hedges, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Brilliant, riveting, and deeply disquieting . . . very, very few people have seen as much of the front lines as Filkins, and only a handful have the talent to convey those lines . . . The Forever War is . . . clear-eyed, unsentimental . . . superb.” —Hugh Hewitt, Townhall

“Extraordinarily vivid . . . Filkins has a magnetic eye for the absurd and the horrifying . . . [The Forever War] has no dull spots.” —Bruce Ramsay, Seattle Times

“Filkins . . . reaches for the kind of prose used by the great war reporters, who . . . assert that lucidity in the face of extreme violence is a moral act . . . The Forever War is very good at finding stories that resonate with the vast anarchic violence of Filkins’ time in Iraq.” —Roger Gathman, Austin American-Statesman

“Compelling . . . vivid . . . Much has been written about these wars and the terrorism and misleading public relations campaign that prefigured them. Probably less has been written from the ground up to the broken rooftops where so much of the fighting has been waged. And rarely has it been conveyed with the detail and tenacity of The Forever War.” —Eric Hanson, Star Tribune

“[This] almost reckessly courageous New York Times reporter describes the surreal and tragic consequences of Bush’s misadventure with understated empathy and novelistic brio . . . hauntingly cool . . . it may be the best war writing by an American since Michael Herr, Ward Just, and Philip Caputo covered Vietnam . . . the book is a necessary work that cuts through rhetoric and official lies.” —Ariel Gonzalez, The Miami Herald

“Remarkably intense . . . [Dexter Filkins’s] accounts of the battle for Falluja in 2004 will long be considered classics of war correspondence because of the vivid descriptions of the fighting and the courage of the reporter who wrote them . . . The Forever War . . . mixes crisp reporting with more impressionistic appraisals of the effects of war . . . This conflict will certainly have a vast literature devoted to it. The Forever War will be one of the books that readers will turn to as they try to comprehend the mix of courage and folly that marked the bloody first years of this century.” —Philip Seib, Dallas Morning News

“Unflinching . . . Filkins confronts the absurdity of war head-on . . . This is a page-turner, and one of the most astounding books yet written about the war in Iraq. The magic of The Forever War is the dispassionate yet hyper-involving manner in which Filkins offers scores of mini-narratives . . . Filkins doesn’t lecture, he just reports, in great and perfect detail. It’s possibly the only true requirement for a good war story. Or any story, for that matter.” —Gilbert Cruz, Time

“Colorful . . . gripping .”—Harry Levins, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“The Forever War offers clarity . . . [it] is fascinating and revealing, not to mention horrifying . . . [Filkins’s] raw vignettes are a must-read for anyone trying to understand the devastation that is Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s . . . a monument to great reporting.” —Clint O’Connor, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Stunning . . . His perspective is unique . . . he specializes in misery, chaos, and confusion, yet without losing sympathy for soldiers and civilians.” —Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

“There’s something about Dexter Filkins’s reporting from the war in Iraq that consistently sets it apart from most other coverage . . . Mostly, he puts the reader in his combat boots and then puts those boots in dangerous places where most sane people would dare not tread . . . no one does a better job of bringing to life the reality of the war than Filkins . . . [he] is a journalist who follows in the footsteps of great war correspondents like Ernie Pyle, Homer Bigart, and David Halberstam, men who were unafraid to go to the most dangerous places and were equally fearless about reporting the truth they found there.” —John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News

“Brilliant . . . The Forever War . . . deserves to be ranked as a classic . . . and is likely to be regarded as the definitive account of how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were experienced by those who actually waged them . . . first rate . . . His account is unadorned . . . and utterly harrowing . . . meticulously constructed . . . Thanks to one reporter’s heroic act of witness and brilliant recitation of what he saw, we can see the war—as it is, and for ourselves.” —Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

“Dexter Filkins is one of war writings’ modern marvels, a writer of tremendous gifts and appropriate grit to go where others will not. [Dexter Filkins is] in a pantheon of fine war writers and his remarkable . . . book, The Forever War, is a testament to why he belongs . . . What sets The Forever War apart is its clarity. The level of accessibility of Filkins’s work . . . is the writer’s greatest gift. He parts the gun smoke in a preternatural way. He seems to see things others simply do not . . . It’s an ability that allows him to convey inelegant truths of war in crisp, never saccharine prose . . . The importance of what Filkins captures here is inestimable . . . If no book can ever truly take you into the foxhole, Filkins’s War takes you as close as you might be comfortable.” —Henry C. Jackson, Associated Press

“Filkins knows the good, the bad, and the ugly of what happens when men organize to kill each other . . . [The Forever War is] well worth reading . . . for those who want to digest an eyewitness rendering of the savagery and sadness that befell Iraq between 2004 and 2007(and all of us should) there is no more upsetting account published . . . a compelling read.” —Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard

“I picked up Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War and couldn’t put it down. This book . . . will be deemed a classic of [this] long, sad conflict . . . Filkins’s pages give a real flavor of the mad, violent, unpredictable reality of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq . . . he writes exceedingly well. Often his prose sings.” —Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle

“Rich with details both grotesque and sublime . . . The Forever War is a masterpiece of nuance.” —Matthew B. Stannard, The San Francisco Chronicle

“The Forever War . . . should be required reading . . . Filkins almost died several times while gathering the material for his book, but that is hardly the only reason for giving it your attention. You will not regret it, and you will not forget it.” —Steve Barnes, Baxter Bulletin

“Wonderfully written and carefully researched . . . Filkins’s meticulous attention to detail and his bravery . . . [are] evident on every page . . . Filkins, like all great war correspondents, is singularly driven to understand what’s happening on the ground . . . The Forever War . . . serves as a powerful lesson in what it takes to cover the complexities of war . . . Dexter Filkins’s gripping account gives readers a clear, though disturbing, view of what’s happening on the ground in Iraq. And he has put himself in the middle of this madness to deliver a stunning and illuminating story.” —Chuck Leddy, Christian Science Monitor

“Phenomenal . . . The more you read, the harder it is to put down . . . The Forever War masterfully paints a picture of a complex Iraq, full of duality . . . Filkins examines the geopolitical conflict with a lens so finite that it can soften the heart and mind one moment, and frighten the next . . . [Filkins] simply manages to write with such immediacy and a masterful command of the written word that it is impossible not to be moved . . . The Forever War makes the war in Iraq so real, so haunting, that you’ll want to sleep with the book next to your bed and read it in every spare moment until the last page. It does what a great book about war, loss, politics, and sacrifice should—it moves, shocks, entertains, educates, and inspires. The Forever War is peerless—a classic.” —Genvieve Long, The Epoch Times

“Brilliant . . . This is a reporter’s book, and it shows . . . His knowledge of his subject matter is broad and deep . . . The writing . . . is trenchant and visceral as he describes Iraq’s spiral into madness. Ever the good reporter, Filkins allows the many contradictions of the place and the things he witnesssed and experienced there to speak for themselves. His language is straightforward and economical, allowing the war to come through with an unfiltered-seeming intensity and immediacy . . . Comparisons to Michael Herr’s Vietnam masterpiece Dispatches are not unwarranted.” —Clint Douglas, The Washington Monthly

“A prose photo-mosaic . . . an impressionistic chronicle of man’s endless and sometimes inventive inhumanity . . . a chilling and ethereal narrative of loss and the promise of loss.” —Jim Chiavelli, The Boston Globe

“[Filkins is] the real deal, a reporter’s reporter . . . his brave and stunning new book . . . pulses with prose so lean—whipsawing between brutality and beauty—that it takes your breath away . . . Filkins’s voice in The Forever War possesses the raw power of a camera close-up.” —Paul Grondahl, Times Union

“The Forever War puts both boots on the ground and the fear of man into the very marrow of your soul . . . If you don’t read this front-line recounting of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not only will you be missing out on a new classic (this is this generation’s Dispatches), but you’ll be denying yourself the opportunity of the side of the world no one should ever have to endure. Is it a dark side? You betcha. And it’s as bright as a fresh wound . . . remarkable.”—John Hood, The Miami Sun Post

“For [its] unconventional format, and for its literary merit, The Forever War has been compared—and not at all outrageously—to Michael Herr’s Dispatches. Filkins evokes the terror and terrible thrill of battle better than any of his colleagues . . . Not only does he display a reporter’s sharp eye for detail . . . he captures the sights and sounds of combat with considerable skill, in spare but powerful prose . . . unforgettable . . . fluid and affecting.” —Chris Toensing, The Nation

“The Forever War is too sad to read, but it is too important, too vivid, and too powerful not to read . . . Filkins seems to have no agenda but to tell what he sees, a hard-won and dangerous truth, as it turns out . . . An extrardinary war narrative—one of the best ever.” —Laura Wadley, Daily Herald (Provo, UT)

“The Forever War is already a classic—it has the timeless feel of all great war literature. A lot has been written about Iraq and Afghanistan, but no one has seen as much, survived as much, and registered the horror with such sad eloquence as Dexter Filkins. His combination of courage and sensitivity is so rare that books like his come along only once every major war. This one is ours.” —George Packer, author of The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq

“Filkins . . . is widely regarded as among the finest war correspondents of this generation. His richly textured book . . . does not editorialize—a welcome change from the punditry that shapes most writing from these war zones.” —Publishers Weekly

“A . . . litany of war’s savage absurdity . . . Filkins writes with candor and clarity . . . Sharing his deeply humbling, transforming journey, the author tempers numbing details of slaughter and carnage with affecting human stories.” —Kirkus

“Filkins . . . marshals his broad experience to present a wide-ranging view of this struggle, told through a series of intense, vivid, and startling vignettes. . . . A portrait of the difficulty, complexity, and savagery of a conflict that will be with us for some time.” —Jay Freeman, Booklist

“In his extraordinary—and extraordinarily important—book, [Dexter] Filkins does not rush to condemn; his is an impeccably balanced story of hope and despair. Through a series of surreal and jaw-dropping vignettes from Afghanistan and Iraq, each written with considerable literary flare, The Forever War takes us to the people affected by these wars in a way no other account has quite managed . . . The Forever War is indispensible: a lesson in reporting.” —James Grant, The Herald

“Unflinching.” —Matt Haber, The New York Observer

“Stunning...it is not facetious to speak of work like that of Dexter Filkins as defining the 'culture' of a war...This unforgettable narrative [represents]...a haunting spiritual witness that will make this volume a part of this awful war's history.” —Robert Stone, on the front page of The New York Times Book Review

“Gut-wrenching and touching . . . Mr. Filkins’s stories are those of a writer willing to endure hardship, danger and anguish to paint an accurate picture of war for the American public . . . His prose is as blunt as it is powerful.” —Lee H. Hamilton, The New York Times

“Splendid . . . it shines as a work of literature, illuminating the human cost of war. Filkins’s singular skill . . . rests in showing how war shatters lives and how some people manage to survive amid fear, violence, intrigue and chaos . . . These stories are accurate but not antiseptic, detached but not uncaring. And they force the reader to reflect on how fragile civilization is and how fortunate we Americans are.” —Bing West, The Washington Post

“Addictive . . . [Filkins is] a master of the moment, of the concrete, of texture; where others try to explain, he wants you to know what being there feels like . . . He is a war reporter who has finally freed himself from the long shadow of Michael Herr . . . Filkins’s personality is very different. In his writing you sense a man striving to hold onto his decency in the midst of a slaughter that would drive most of us deep into cynicism . . . I couldn’t put this book down.” —Craig Seligman, Bloomberg

“Extraordinary . . . if what Michael Herr brought back from Vietnam in Dispatches was a sort of Jackson Pollock—streaks of blood, trickles of dread, splattershot of hard rock and harder drugs—The Forever War is like a pointillist Seurat, a neo-Impressionist juxtaposition of spots of pure color with black holes and open wounds.” —John Leonard, Harper’s

“Dexter Filkins . . . is well on his way to becoming the pre-eminent war reporter of this tumultuous era . . . His understated prose offers a stiletto-sharp account of places he’s gone and people he’s met.”—John Marshall, Seattle Post Intelligencer

“The definitive—and heartbreakingly humanizing report from the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . The Forever War is the most affecting account of how all this madness came to be. Which means it’s also the most effective, since madness cannot be explained, only felt—and anyone who reads this book is going to feel it in the marrow . . . Few war reporters can match Filkins’s ambition and fortitude; even fewer possess his descriptive powers . . . The Forever War [is] about all wars, everywhere—and a book that will be read fifty years from now.” —Andrew Costello, GQ

“A kaleidoscope of images and intensity . . . electrifying vignettes . . . fleeting moments of humanity in countries convulsed by violence . . . It is written in finely honed bursts of vibrant color that capture the peculiar culture of the war . . . It is a raw and riveting account . . . Filkins’s book . . . is designed to take us on a ride. It is a ride into the heart-thumping world of utter destruction and combat . . . his honesty in portraying the war implicitly exposes the hollowness of the platitudes used in Washington to defend it.” —Chris Hedges, Philadelphia Inquirer

“Brilliant, riveting, and deeply disquieting . . . very, very few people have seen as much of the front lines as Filkins, and only a handful have the talent to convey those lines . . . The Forever War is . . . clear-eyed, unsentimental . . . superb.” —Hugh Hewitt, Townhall

“Extraordinarily vivid . . . Filkins has a magnetic eye for the absurd and the horrifying . . . [The Forever War] has no dull spots.” —Bruce Ramsay, Seattle Times

“Filkins . . . reaches for the kind of prose used by the great war reporters, who . . . assert that lucidity in the face of extreme violence is a moral act . . . The Forever War is very good at finding stories that resonate with the vast anarchic violence of Filkins’ time in Iraq.”—Roger Gathman, Austin American-Statesman

“Compelling . . . vivid . . . Much has been written about these wars and the terrorism and misleading public relations campaign that prefigured them. Probably less has been written from the ground up to the broken rooftops where so much of the fighting has been waged. And rarely has it been conveyed with the detail and tenacity of The Forever War.”—Eric Hanson, Star Tribune

“[This] almost reckessly courageous New York Times reporter describes the surreal and tragic consequences of Bush’s misadventure with understated empathy and novelistic brio . . . hauntingly cool . . . it may be the best war writing by an American since Michael Herr, Ward Just, and Philip Caputo covered Vietnam . . . the book is a necessary work that cuts through rhetoric and official lies.”—Ariel Gonzalez, The Miami Herald

“Remarkably intense . . . [Dexter Filkins’s] accounts of the battle for Falluja in 2004 will long be considered classics of war correspondence because of the vivid descriptions of the fighting and the courage of the reporter who wrote them . . . The Forever War . . . mixes crisp reporting with more impressionistic appraisals of the effects of war . . . This conflict will certainly have a vast literature devoted to it. The Forever War will be one of the books that readers will turn to as they try to comprehend the mix of courage and folly that marked the bloody first years of this century.”—Philip Seib, Dallas Morning News

“Unflinching . . . Filkins confronts the absurdity of war head-on . . . This is a page-turner, and one of the most astounding books yet written about the war in Iraq. The magic of The Forever War is the dispassionate yet hyper-involving manner in which Filkins offers scores of mini-narratives . . . Filkins doesn’t lecture, he just reports, in great and perfect detail. It’s possibly the only true requirement for a good war story. Or any story, for that matter.”—Gilbert Cruz, Time

“Colorful . . . gripping .”—Harry Levins, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“The Forever War offers clarity . . . [it] is fascinating and revealing, not to mention horrifying . . . [Filkins’s] raw vignettes are a must-read for anyone trying to understand the devastation that is Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s . . . a monument to great reporting.”—Clint O’Connor, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Stunning . . . His perspective is unique . . . he specializes in misery, chaos, and confusion, yet without losing sympathy for soldiers and civilians.”—Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

“There’s something about Dexter Filkins’s reporting from the war in Iraq that consistently sets it apart from most other coverage . . . Mostly, he puts the reader in his combat boots and then puts those boots in dangerous places where most sane people would dare not tread . . . no one does a better job of bringing to life the reality of the war than Filkins . . . [he] is a journalist who follows in the footsteps of great war correspondents like Ernie Pyle, Homer Bigart, and David Halberstam, men who were unafraid to go to the most dangerous places and were equally fearless about reporting the truth they found there.” —John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News

“Brilliant . . . The Forever War . . . deserves to be ranked as a classic . . . and is likely to be regarded as the definitive account of how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were experienced by those who actually waged them . . . first rate . . . His account is unadorned . . . and utterly harrowing . . . meticulously constructed . . . Thanks to one reporter’s heroic act of witness and brilliant recitation of what he saw, we can see the war—as it is, and for ourselves.” —Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

“Filkins knows the good, the bad, and the ugly of what happens when men organize to kill each other . . . [The Forever War is] well worth reading . . . for those who want to digest an eyewitness rendering of the savagery and sadness that befell Iraq between 2004 and 2007(and all of us should) there is no more upsetting account published . . . a compelling read.” —Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard

“I picked up Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War and couldn’t put it down. This book . . . will be deemed a classic of [this] long, sad conflict . . . Filkins’s pages give a real flavor of the mad, violent, unpredictable reality of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq . . . he writes exceedingly well. Often his prose sings.” —Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle

“Wonderfully written and carefully researched . . . Filkins’s meticulous attention to detail and his bravery . . . [are] evident on every page . . . Filkins, like all great war correspondents, is singularly driven to understand what’s happening on the ground . . . The Forever War . . . serves as a powerful lesson in what it takes to cover the complexities of war . . . Dexter Filkins’s gripping account gives readers a clear, though disturbing, view of what’s happening on the ground in Iraq. And he has put himself in the middle of this madness to deliver a stunning and illuminating story.”—Chuck Leddy, Christian Science Monitor

“Phenomenal . . . The more you read, the harder it is to put down . . . The Forever War masterfully paints a picture of a complex Iraq, full of duality . . . Filkins examines the geopolitical conflict with a lens so finite that it can soften the heart and mind one moment, and frighten the next . . . [Filkins] simply manages to write with such immediacy and a masterful command of the written word that it is impossible not to be moved . . . The Forever War makes the war in Iraq so real, so haunting, that you’ll want to sleep with the book next to your bed and read it in every spare moment until the last page. It does what a great book about war, loss, politics, and sacrifice should—it moves, shocks, entertains, educates, and inspires. The Forever War is peerless—a classic.”—Genvieve Long, The Epoch Times

“Brilliant . . . The Forever War . . . deserves to be ranked as a classic . . . and is likely to be regarded as the definitive account of how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were experienced by those who actually waged them . . . first rate . . . His account is unadorned . . . and utterly harrowing . . . meticulously constructed . . . Thanks to one reporter’s heroic act of witness and brilliant recitation of what he saw, we can see the war—as it is, and for ourselves.”—Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

“Dexter Filkins is one of war writings’ modern marvels, a writer of tremendous gifts and appropriate grit to go where others will not. [Dexter Filkins is] in a pantheon of fine war writers and his remarkable . . . book, The Forever War, is a testament to why he belongs . . . What sets The Forever War apart is its clarity. The level of accessibility of Filkins’s work . . . is the writer’s greatest gift. He parts the gun smoke in a preternatural way. He seems to see things others simply do not . . . It’s an ability that allows him to convey inelegant truths of war in crisp, never saccharine prose . . . The importance of what Filkins captures here is inestimable . . . If no book can ever truly take you into the foxhole, Filkins’s War takes you as close as you might be comfortable.”—Henry C. Jackson, Associated Press

“Remarkably intense . . . [Dexter Filkins’s] accounts of the battle for Falluja in 2004 will long be considered classics of war correspondence because of the vivid descriptions of the fighting and the courage of the reporter who wrote them . . . The Forever War . . . mixes crisp reporting with more impressionistic appraisals of the effects of war . . . This conflict will certainly have a vast literature devoted to it. The Forever War will be one of the books that readers will turn to as they try to comprehend the mix of courage and folly that marked the bloody first years of this century.”—Philip Seib, Dallas Morning News

“Unflinching . . . Filkins confronts the absurdity of war head-on . . . This is a page-turner, and one of the most astounding books yet written about the war in Iraq. The magic of The Forever War is the dispassionate yet hyper-involving manner in which Filkins offers scores of mini-narratives . . . Filkins doesn’t lecture, he just reports, in great and perfect detail. It’s possibly the only true requirement for a good war story. Or any story, for that matter.”—Gilbert Cruz, Time

“There’s something about Dexter Filkins’s reporting from the war in Iraq that consistently sets it apart from most other coverage . . . Mostly, he puts the reader in his combat boots and then puts those boots in dangerous places where most sane people would dare not tread . . . no one does a better job of bringing to life the reality of the war than Filkins . . . [he] is a journalist who follows in the footsteps of great war correspondents like Ernie Pyle, Homer Bigart, and David Halberstam, men who were unafraid to go to the most dangerous places and were equally fearless about reporting the truth they found there.”—John C. Ensslin, Rocky Mountain News