phil klay – Cannonball Read 17

In A Foreign Field

Missionaries by Phil Klay

July 15, 2021 by Jake Leave a Comment

I usually enjoy former President Barack Obama’s recommended reading lists but, after reading Missionaries, I confess that its presence on his list kind of bugs me. This book is, among other things, a strong handed critique of borderless imperial war and I think it takes a certain kind of cynicism to set that aside and appreciate it solely on its literary value. Because, damn, this book is cynical. How could it not be? Frankly, I knew little about Colombia until reading it. I knew Simón Bolivar liberated it […]

Good, but not so good I’d intentionally read it.

January 21, 2017 by genericwhitegirl Leave a Comment

I accidentally read this book. Is that possible? I realized a few hours in that it wasn’t autobiographical, but rather a collection of fictional short stories and had a decision to make…do I stay or do I go? It’s not that it isn’t well written and interesting, I just don’t have much interest in reading fictional war accounts. It’s not my favorite genre, but non-fiction IS. So if it’s a non-fictional war story, I’m hooked! Get the difference? ” Redeployment is broken up into 12 […]

“War is too strange to process alone.”

March 16, 2015 by bonnie 3 Comments

I was intrigued by Redeployment when I heard that it was about the Iraq War. And then, when it won the National Book Award in 2014, my curiosity reached a fever pitch. How could a collection of short stories trump the magnificent Station Eleven or All the Light We Cannot See, both of which I read and LOVED before this book? As it turns out, the committee knew what it was about. To put it simply, Redeployment is haunting. It is gritty, hard-eyed, and unflinching […]

War Stories – OIF style

May 11, 2014 by Jen K Leave a Comment

Having said that, I thought the collection was rather well done, and rang true even if I couldn’t relate to many of the details or the specifics. I think that’s another reason I am not that drawn to military books. I never feel like they tell my story, and to be honest, a book about my deployments would be rather boring. I was in a PLS company and did convoys on one, and during the other I had a staff job – I had long […]

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