![]() With an intellect as sharp and critical as Marlantes’, and a temperament not afraid to display confusion or remorse, What It Is Like is more than worth the effort of any reader.” - Los Angeles Times Marlantes is top-notch in describing ground combat and its morally brutalizing effect on warriors. “he passion and self-revealing pain of What It Is Like make it a must-read for anyone interested in war. “A precisely crafted and bracingly honest book.” - The Atlantic “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 “In this thoughtful, literate work of self-exorcism, Marlantes tells tales of incredible bravery as well as brutality.” - People Magazine “ What It Is Like to Go to War ought to be mandatory reading by potential infantry recruits and by residents of any nation that sends its kids-Marlantes’s word-into combat.” - San Francisco Chronicle “ What It Is Like to Go to War is a well-crafted and forcefully argued work that contains fresh and important insights into what it’s like to be in a war and what it does to the human psyche.” - The Washington Post 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 ![]() 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. In my eyes he has become the preeminent literary voice on war of our generation. “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. ![]() 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. He makes it clear just how poorly prepared our nineteen-year-old warriors-mainly men but increasingly women-are for the psychological and spiritual aspects of the journey. 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. He tells frankly about how he is haunted by the face of a young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters and how he finally finds a way to make peace with his past. 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. 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 What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes takes a deeply personal and candid look at the experience and ordeal of combat, critically examining how we might better prepare our young soldiers for war. Marlantes survived, but like many of his brothers in arms, he has spent the last forty years dealing with his experiences. He killed the enemy and he watched friends die. In his thirteen-month tour he saw intense combat. Marlantes was a bright young man who was well trained for the task at hand but, as he was to discover, far from mentally prepared for what he was about to experience. In 1968, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of a platoon of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions.
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