Download or read book Summary of Phil Klay s Uncertain Ground written by Everest Media and published by Everest Media LLC. This book was released on 2022-07-24T22:59:00Z with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 I have always been drawn to the stories of violence in Iraq, even though I was never in any danger myself. I feel that by not talking about these experiences, we are failing to process them. #2 I was given two weeks’ leave halfway through my deployment, and I went home to New York. At one point, I walked down Madison Avenue near where it intersects with Broadway. Suddenly, I felt the urge to weep. The images came back not as photographs, but as living memories. #3 I was not there when the photos were taken, but I still remember the emotions they sparked in me. I feel guilty about the sorrow I feel because I know it is manufactured, and I feel guilty about the sorrow I do not feel because it is owed, it is the barest beginning of what is owed to the fallen. #4 The day Osama bin Laden died, I learned that one of my former Marines was permanently blind. The Iraq War and the Afghanistan surge were both based on the success of the Iraq surge, which was an outgrowth of previous Iraq policy.
Download or read book Uncertain Ground written by Phil Klay and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment and Missionaries, an astonishing fever graph of the effects of twenty years of war in a brutally divided America. When Phil Klay left the Marines a decade ago after serving as an officer in Iraq, he found himself a part of the community of veterans who have no choice but to grapple with the meaning of their wartime experiences—for themselves and for the country. American identity has always been bound up in war—from the revolutionary war of our founding, to the civil war that ended slavery, to the two world wars that launched America as a superpower. What did the current wars say about who we are as a country, and how should we respond as citizens? Unlike in previous eras of war, relatively few Americans have had to do any real grappling with the endless, invisible conflicts of the post-9/11 world; in fact, increasingly few people are even aware they are still going on. It is as if these wars are a dark star with a strong gravitational force that draws a relatively small number of soldiers and their families into its orbit while remaining inconspicuous to most other Americans. In the meantime, the consequences of American military action abroad may be out of sight and out of mind, but they are very real indeed. This chasm between the military and the civilian in American life, and the moral blind spot it has created, is one of the great themes of Uncertain Ground, Phil Klay’s powerful series of reckonings with some of our country’s thorniest concerns, written in essay form over the past ten years. In the name of what do we ask young Americans to kill, and to die? In the name of what does this country hang together? As we see at every turn in these pages, those two questions have a great deal to do with each another, and how we answer them will go a long way toward deciding where our troubled country goes from here.
Download or read book Missionaries written by Phil Klay and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of President Obama's Favorite Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | One of the Wall Street Journal Ten Best Books of the Year "Missionaries is a courageous book: It doesn’t shy away, as so much fiction does, from the real world.” —Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The New York Times Book Review “A sweeping, interconnected novel of ideas in the tradition of Joseph Conrad and Norman Mailer . . . By taking a long view of the ‘rational insanity’ of global warfare, Missionaries brilliantly fills one of the largest gaps in contemporary literature.” —The Wall Street Journal The debut novel from the National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment A group of Colombian soldiers prepares to raid a drug lord's safe house on the Venezuelan border. They're watching him with an American-made drone, about to strike using military tactics taught to them by U.S. soldiers who honed their skills to lethal perfection in Iraq. In Missionaries, Phil Klay examines the globalization of violence through the interlocking stories of four characters and the conflicts that define their lives. For Mason, a U.S. Army Special Forces medic, and Lisette, a foreign correspondent, America's long post-9/11 wars in the Middle East exerted a terrible draw that neither is able to shake. Where can such a person go next? All roads lead to Colombia, where the US has partnered with local government to keep predatory narco gangs at bay. Mason, now a liaison to the Colombian military, is ready for the good war, and Lisette is more than ready to cover it. Juan Pablo, a Colombian officer, must juggle managing the Americans' presence and navigating a viper's nest of factions bidding for power. Meanwhile, Abel, a lieutenant in a local militia, has lost almost everything in the seemingly endless carnage of his home province, where the lines between drug cartels, militias, and the state are semi-permeable. Drawing on six years of research in America and Colombia into the effects of the modern way of war on regular people, Klay has written a novel of extraordinary suspense infused with geopolitical sophistication and storytelling instincts that are second to none. Missionaries is a window not only into modern war, but into the individual lives that go on long after the drones have left the skies.
Download or read book Fire and Forget written by Matt Gallagher and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fire and Forget includes the title story from Redeployment by Phil Klay, 2014 National Book Award Winner in Fiction These stories aren't pretty and they aren't for the faint of heart. They are realistic, haunting and shocking. And they are all unforgettable. Television reports, movies, newspapers and blogs about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have offered images of the fighting there. But this collection offers voices -- powerful voices, telling the kind of truth that only fiction can offer. What makes the collection so remarkable is that all of these stories are written by those who were there, or waited for them at home. The anthology, which features a Foreword by National Book Award winner Colum McCann, includes the best voices of the wars' generation: award-winning author Phil Klay's "Redeployment" Brian Turner, whose poem "Hurt Locker" was the movie's inspiration; Colby Buzzell, whose book My War resonates with countless veterans; Siobhan Fallon, whose book You Know When the Men Are Gone echoes the joy and pain of the spouses left behind; Matt Gallagher, whose book Kaboom captures the hilarity and horror of the modern military experience; and ten others.
Download or read book Redeployment written by Phil Klay and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-03-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction "Redeployment is hilarious, biting, whipsawing and sad. It’s the best thing written so far on what the war did to people’s souls.” —Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review Selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post Book World, Amazon, and more Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos. In "Redeployment", a soldier who has had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people "who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died." In "After Action Report", a Lance Corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn't commit, in order that his best friend will be unburdened. A Morturary Affairs Marine tells about his experiences collecting remains—of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers both. A chaplain sees his understanding of Christianity, and his ability to provide solace through religion, tested by the actions of a ferocious Colonel. And in the darkly comic "Money as a Weapons System", a young Foreign Service Officer is given the absurd task of helping Iraqis improve their lives by teaching them to play baseball. These stories reveal the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship and violence that make up a soldier's daily life at war, and the isolation, remorse, and despair that can accompany a soldier's homecoming. Redeployment has become a classic in the tradition of war writing. Across nations and continents, Klay sets in devastating relief the two worlds a soldier inhabits: one of extremes and one of loss. Written with a hard-eyed realism and stunning emotional depth, this work marks Phil Klay as one of the most talented new voices of his generation.
Download or read book Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences written by Alexander L. George and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2005-04-15 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The use of case studies to build and test theories in political science and the other social sciences has increased in recent years. Many scholars have argued that the social sciences rely too heavily on quantitative research and formal models and have attempted to develop and refine rigorous methods for using case studies. This text presents a comprehensive analysis of research methods using case studies and examines the place of case studies in social science methodology. It argues that case studies, statistical methods, and formal models are complementary rather than competitive. The book explains how to design case study research that will produce results useful to policymakers and emphasizes the importance of developing policy-relevant theories. It offers three major contributions to case study methodology: an emphasis on the importance of within-case analysis, a detailed discussion of process tracing, and development of the concept of typological theories. Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences will be particularly useful to graduate students and scholars in social science methodology and the philosophy of science, as well as to those designing new research projects, and will contribute greatly to the broader debate about scientific methods.
Download or read book Ground Level written by Rufus Young and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Due to unexeptable work ethics of an employer, neighborhood friends find themselves at odds with a mogul giant, as close knit tragedies test their mortal resolve, trechery and deceipt brings the two forces together to work as one, and deep seated revenge drives them to the breaking point, with justice being the only remedy.
Download or read book The People of the Broken Neck written by Silas Dent Zobal and published by Unbridled Books. This book was released on 2016-09-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the woods where he hides with his nearly grown son Clarke and his young daughter King, ex-Army Ranger Dominick Sawyer watches Agent Charlie Basin’s flashlight beam bounce on the walls inside his cabin. Dom’s wife is missing. His post-trauma hallucinations rip at him explosively and bring him to his knees. And a local deputy sheriff is dead. When the FBI agents recede into the night, the Sawyers begin to run, across the country in stolen trucks, leaving a trail of blood behind them. Together with a young girl they pick up on the road, they hope to run until they find a peaceable place in the American Northwest. But Agent Basin sees his own troubled family reflected in Dom’s haunted existence, and his pursuit is relentless. All any of them want is to spirit King away to someplace safe. All she wants is not to be afraid of her father and to find out why her mother disappeared.
Download or read book Hidden Children written by André Stein and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 1994 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten stories of children who experienced the holocaust firsthand.
Download or read book The President s Book of Secrets written by David Priess and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every president has had a unique and complicated relationship with the intelligence community. While some have been coolly distant, even adversarial, others have found their intelligence agencies to be among the most valuable instruments of policy and power. Since John F. Kennedy's presidency, this relationship has been distilled into a personalized daily report: a short summary of what the intelligence apparatus considers the most crucial information for the president to know that day about global threats and opportunities. This top–secret document is known as the President's Daily Brief, or, within national security circles, simply “the Book.” Presidents have spent anywhere from a few moments (Richard Nixon) to a healthy part of their day (George W. Bush) consumed by its contents; some (Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush) consider it far and away the most important document they saw on a regular basis while commander in chief. The details of most PDBs are highly classified, and will remain so for many years. But the process by which the intelligence community develops and presents the Book is a fascinating look into the operation of power at the highest levels. David Priess, a former intelligence officer and daily briefer, has interviewed every living president and vice president as well as more than one hundred others intimately involved with the production and delivery of the president's book of secrets. He offers an unprecedented window into the decision making of every president from Kennedy to Obama, with many character–rich stories revealed here for the first time.
Download or read book Hide This Italian Book written by Nadja Rizzuti and published by Langenscheidt Publishing Group. This book was released on 2006 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This uncensored language guide has everything you need to speak real Italian - from cool lingo to hard-core insults. The book features phrases on love, sex, the body, partying, fashion, and extreme sports, as well as language used on the Internet, in text-messaging, email, and more.
Download or read book How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything written by Rosa Brooks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-08-09 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inside secure command centers, military officials make life and death decisions-- but the Pentagon also offers food courts, banks, drugstores, florists, and chocolate shops. It is rather symbolic of the way that the U.S. military has become our one-stop-shopping solution to global problems. Brooks traces this seismic shift in how America wages war, and provides a rallying cry for action as we undermine the values and rules that keep our world from sliding toward chaos.
Download or read book The Corpse Exhibition written by Hassan Blasim and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-02-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A blistering debut that does for the Iraqi perspective on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan what Phil Klay’s Redeployment does for the American perspective “[A] wonderful collection.” —George Saunders, The New York Times Book Review The first major literary work about the Iraq War from an Iraqi perspective—by an explosive new voice hailed as “perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive” (The Guardian)—The Corpse Exhibition shows us the war as we have never seen it before. Here is a world not only of soldiers and assassins, hostages and car bombers, refugees and terrorists, but also of madmen and prophets, angels and djinni, sorcerers and spirits. Blending shocking realism with flights of fantasy, The Corpse Exhibition offers us a pageant of horrors, as haunting as the photos of Abu Ghraib and as difficult to look away from, but shot through with a gallows humor that yields an unflinching comedy of the macabre. Gripping and hallucinatory, this is a new kind of storytelling forged in the crucible of war.
Download or read book Empire City written by Matt Gallagher and published by Washington Square Press. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Youngblood comes a “brilliant and daring” (Phil Klay, award-winning author of Redeployment) novel following a group of super-powered soldiers and civilians as they navigate an imperial America on the precipice of a major upheaval—for fans of The Fortress of Solitude and The Plot Against America. Thirty years after its great triumph in Vietnam, the United States has again become mired in an endless foreign war overseas. Stories of super soldiers known as the Volunteers tuck in little American boys and girls every night. Yet domestic politics are aflame—an ex-military watchdog group clashes with police while radical terrorists threaten to expose government experiments within the veteran rehabilitation colonies. Halfway between war and peace, the Volunteers find themselves waiting for orders in the vast American city-state, Empire City. There they encounter a small group of civilians who know the truth about their powers, including Sebastian Rios, a young bureaucrat wrestling with survivor guilt, and Mia Tucker, a wounded army pilot-turned-Wall Street banker. Meanwhile, Jean-Jacques Saint-Preux, a Haitian American Volunteer from the International Legion, decides he’ll do whatever it takes to return to the front lines. Through it all, a controversial retired general emerges as a frontrunner in the presidential campaign, promising to save the country from itself. Her election would mean unprecedented military control over the country, with promises of security and stability—but at what cost? “A passionate, scary, wise, and perhaps even prophetic novel” (Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried), Empire City is a rousing vision of an alternate—yet all too familiar—America on the brink written by a “preeminent voice in American writing” (Sara Novic, author of Girl at War).
Download or read book Twisted Tech written by Scott McClallen and published by . This book was released on 2021-12-20 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Notes on a Foreign Country written by Suzy Hansen and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Overseas Press Club of America's Cornelius Ryan Award • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Book Review Notable Book • Named a Best Book of the Year by New York Magazine and The Progressive "A deeply honest and brave portrait of of an individual sensibility reckoning with her country's violent role in the world." —Hisham Matar, The New York Times Book Review In the wake of the September 11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Suzy Hansen, who grew up in an insular conservative town in New Jersey, was enjoying early success as a journalist for a high-profile New York newspaper. Increasingly, though, the disconnect between the chaos of world events and the response at home took on pressing urgency for her. Seeking to understand the Muslim world that had been reduced to scaremongering headlines, she moved to Istanbul. Hansen arrived in Istanbul with romantic ideas about a mythical city perched between East and West, and with a naïve sense of the Islamic world beyond. Over the course of her many years of living in Turkey and traveling in Greece, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Iran, she learned a great deal about these countries and their cultures and histories and politics. But the greatest, most unsettling surprise would be what she learned about her own country—and herself, an American abroad in the era of American decline. It would take leaving her home to discover what she came to think of as the two Americas: the country and its people, and the experience of American power around the world. She came to understand that anti-Americanism is not a violent pathology. It is, Hansen writes, “a broken heart . . . A one-hundred-year-old relationship.” Blending memoir, journalism, and history, and deeply attuned to the voices of those she met on her travels, Notes on a Foreign Country is a moving reflection on America’s place in the world. It is a powerful journey of self-discovery and revelation—a profound reckoning with what it means to be American in a moment of grave national and global turmoil.
Download or read book Lying written by Sissela Bok and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-04-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is it ever all right to lie? A philosopher looks at lying and deception in public and private life—in government, medicine, law, academia, journalism, in the family and between friends. Lying is a penetrating and thoughtful examination of one of the most pervasive yet little discussed aspects of our public and private lives. Beginning with the moral questions raised about lying since antiquity, Sissela Bok takes up the justifications offered for all kinds of lies—white lies, lies to the sick and dying, lies of parents to children, lies to enemies, lies to protect clients and peers. The consequences of such lies are then explored through a number of concrete situations in which people are involved, either as liars or as the victims of a lie.
