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Summary: Thank You Chris Hedges!
Review: After hearing the author interviewed on NPR I immediately rushed to purchase this book. I applaud the courage it took to present this timeless perspective on war in an age dominated by limited vision and devoid of understanding of the psychological and spiritual laws which govern all of our lives. I do not normally read about war, but the our President's insistence on the polarizing perspective of the "evildoers" being 'out there' has made this book even more relevant now. Mr Hedges speakes from the heart of his humanity, as well as his hard won, highly educated perspective on war. I hope to meet the author one day so I can shake his hand and tell him his battle scars are a blessing to us all.
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Summary: Typical liberal view that war is awful
Review: Simplistic book that doesn't provide any historic perspective on world events that lead to wars that benefit mankind in some way. Mr. Hedges doesn't seem to understand that leaders like Hitler and Hussein must be removed or else their destruction and empires will spread. Even worse than this book is seeing Hedges droning on and on with a sour look on his fact on Book TV on cable...
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Summary: Honest
Review: This is an honest analysis of war, people, politics, and civilization. The author did a great job at putting together a thought-stimulating book. For another perspective on this subject, I would recommend that you also try Norman Thomas Remick's "West Point: Character Leadership...", after you read Chris Hedges' "War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning", especially if you are more liberal or from the rest of the world.
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Summary: I love this book
Review: No, this book is not an exhaustive study of war--I wouldn't have wanted to read it if it were. It's accessible in a way most military books are not. It is wonderfully written and often brilliant. Yes, it becomes a bit repetitive and I, too, would have liked more personal information; he writes in a fairly objective way. But this book is invaluable in understanding our present situation.
As for the criticism that he wasn't a combat soldier, his life was probably in more danger than many veterans' lives.
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Summary: disappointing
Review: Hedges is an excellent reporter and when he is telling a character's story or painting a scene the book comes alive. However the argument of the book is a meandering restatement of the "war is hell" theme, with all the various conflicts blurring indistinguishably together. It does not add much to our understanding of why it keeps happening. The book also falls somewhat short as a personal narrative. In contrast to some other journalist memoirs (such as BANG BANG CLUB) we don't learn much about Hedges's tradecraft - how does he work, does he speak the languages, etc. All in all it feels like a book Hedges felt he had to write, but we do not have to read.
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Summary: Intense
Review: Heavy and relavent. A must read for everyone in these tumultuous times.
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Summary: straight talk about war's attraction and consequences
Review: Chris Hedges covered the major war activities of the last 20 years, up front where it happened. He looks at what attraction is there for the participants, similar to an intoxicant. And how the politicians and press on the homefront are able to manufacture support through what he calls national myths. He does not try to criticize or support any particular war on the merits. This is a very good and important perspective for understanding current events. The only negative is that I think the book itself could be more effectively organized and presented. By the time I had read half the book I think I had garnered 90% of its value for me. But I recommend it heartily. He does not promote controversy but rather speaks plainly and with an excellent choice of words.
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Summary: A Book That Makes you Think
Review: Chris Hedges book is an excellent story of a reporter beaten down by the ravages of war. Instead of becoming numb to the atrocities of man's inhumanity to man, Hedges has become even more in tune to the horrors of war. The book was a fast and captivating read. I recommend it highly.
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Summary: Book Speaks What Usually Remains Unspoken
Review: Growing up in the in the 60's and 70's, nearly everyone's father was a military veteran. It was easy to identify the veterans of actual combat because they, like my father, rarely spoke of their war experiences - as opposed to the non-combat veterans who endlessly gave us their own stories. When the combat veterans did speak, it was typically cryptic, often evasive, and obviously very disturbing for them to recount. "The effectiveness of the myths peddled in war is powerful. We often doubt our own perceptions. We hide these doubts, like troubled believers, sure that no one else feels them. We feel guilty. The myths have determined no only how we should speak, but how we should think. ...we have trouble expressing our discomfort because the collective shout has made it hard to give words to our thoughts." The author breaks this stifled silence of the veterans, and expresses the intoxication and horrors that all war brings to its participants. By truthful revelation of real war, the reader can more actively and intelligently examine his own feelings and actions in the face of the troubles we face today. Read this book. The topics and history contained within have been covered elsewhere many times, but the author eloquently pieces together the common threads among the wars of the 70's, 80's and 90's into a narrative that allows the reader to accept that each new war is not a just unique exercise in patriotism or battle against evil. War is just war, and assumes a life of its own regardless of its sometime noble origin.
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Summary: A Failure of Intellect...
Review: ...Chris Hedges is sick of war and, while he doesn't come out and say it, he is on balance incurably skeptical of any justification for it. What passes off as a psychological work quickly devolves into "I was there, you weren't, and this is the way it is" diatribe against 1) nationalistic myth and 2) dehumanization of the enemy. I wonder how he'd strongly he'd defend that attitude if somebody pointed out that for all his eyewitness accounts he's never actually done any fighting himself. Hedges concludes that these social psychological "ailments" of war will lead to the apocolyptic collapse of whatever power fails to "treat" them. Without getting into all the caveats related to myth and truth (Tolkien) or the psychology of actually waging war (especially at the front, see Grossman), I'd like to go to the most seminal treatise on the subject in human history, Karl von Clausewitz's "On War." Within the first chapter, Clausewitz repudiates many of the poorly articulated conclusions Hedges arrives at, noting the importance strategic will (or blood-thirstiness) on the battlefield, the crises of mismatch between political objectives and military means, and the horrors of both victory and defeat (the latter being almost always worse than the former). Chris Hedges' analysis doesn't even touch the dangers to a society posed by an outside aggressor. There is both value and interest in studying the soft effects of war on societies that undertake it. Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's impressive work--_On Killing_--is a fine piece of work that commands the attention of the war planners and students of military history. Hedges offers nothing to the reader than disenchantment with the way dilapidated peoples wage war on each other. That he has the gall to generalize his experience as an OBSERVER of warfare in the Third World.
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