From the author of the New York Times Bestseller Matterhorn, this is a powerful nonfiction book about the experience of combat and how inadequately we prepare our young men and women for war.
War is as old as humankind, but in the past, warriors were prepared for battle by ritual, religion and literature--which also helped bring them home. In a compelling narrative, Marlantes weaves riveting accounts of his combat experiences with thoughtful analysis, self-examination and his readings--from Homer to the Mahabharata to Jung. He talks frankly about how he is haunted by the face of the young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters and how he finally finds a way to make peace with his past. Marlantes discusses the daily contradictions that warriors face in the grind of war, where each battle requires them to take life or spare life, and where they enter a state he likens to the fervor of religious ecstasy.
Just as Matterhorn is already being acclaimed as a classic of war literature, What It Is Like To Go To War is set to become required reading for anyone--soldier or civilian--interested in this visceral and all too essential part of the human experience.

Reviews

"Karl Marlantes has written a staggeringly beautiful book on combat--what it feels like, what the consequences are and above all, what society must do to understand it. In my eyes he has become the preeminent literary voice on war of our generation. He is a natural storyteller and a deeply profound thinker who not only illuminates war for civilians, but also offers a kind of spiritual guidance to veterans themselves. As this generation of warriors comes home, they will be enormously helped by what Marlantes has written--I'm sure he will literally save lives."--Sebastian Junger
"Marlantes brings candor and wrenching self-analysis to bear on his combat experiences in Vietnam, in a memoir-based meditation whose intentions are three-fold: to help soldiers-to-be understand what they're in for; to help veterans come to terms with what they've seen and done; and to help policymakers know what they're asking of the men they send into combat."--"The New Yorker"
""What It Is Like t

Yale- and Oxford-educated Marlantes (Matter-horn) served as a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam and here presents his very personal and emotional musings on the nature of war, courage, and all the multiple and often contradictory emotions one endures in combat. His point is that while we prepare our warriors in the technical and tactical aspects of war, we do not prepare them for the emotional toll that it will exact from those who survive. Bronson Pinchot reads with a relatively soft and understated baritone that is actually quite engaging. He becomes, in this performance, Marlantes-recalling incidents of combat and the horror and exhilaration that one withstands. Public, academic, and military libraries should purchase. ["Humanizing, empathetic, and wise, this reading experience will light corners in the human experience often judged dark," read the review, also starred, of the New York Times best-selling Atlantic Monthly hc, LJ 9/15/11.-Ed.]-Michael T. Fein, Central Virginia Community Coll. Lib., Lynchburg (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.