The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows
分類: 图书,进口原版,Biographies & Memoirs(传记与自传),Leaders & Notable People(领袖与名人),Military,
品牌: Brian Castner
基本信息出版社:Doubleday (2012年7月10日)精装:240页正文语种:英语ISBN:0385536208条形码:9780385536202商品重量:404 gASIN:0385536208您想告诉我们您发现了更低的价格?
商品描述内容简介In the tradition of Michael Herr’sDispatchesand works by such masters of the memoir as Mary Karr and Tobias Wolff, a powerful account of war and homecoming that grabs readers by the throat even as it touches their hearts.
Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq. Days and nights he and his team—his brothers—would venture forth in heavily armed convoys from their Forward Operating Base to engage in the nerve-racking yet strangely exhilarating work of either disarming the deadly improvised explosive devices that had been discovered, or picking up the pieces when the alert came too late. They relied on an army of remote-controlled cameras and robots, but if that technology failed, a technician would have to don the eighty-pound Kevlar suit, take the Long Walk up to the bomb, and disarm it by hand. This lethal game of cat and mouse was, and continues to be, the real war within America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
ButThe Long Walkis not just about battle itself. It is also an unflinching portrayal of the toll war exacts on the men and women who are fighting it. When Castner returned home to his wife and family, he began a struggle with a no less insidious foe, an unshakable feeling of fear and confusion and survivor’s guilt that he terms The Crazy. His thrilling, heartbreaking, stunningly honest book immerses the reader in two harrowing and simultaneous realities: the terror and excitement and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the enemy within—the haunting memories that will not fade, the survival instincts that will not switch off. After enduring what he has endured, can there ever again be such a thing as “normal”?The Long Walkwill hook you from the very first sentence, and it will stay with you long after its final gripping page has been turned.媒体推荐Advance praise forThe Long Walk:
“Castner has written a powerful book about the long cost of combat and the brotherhood of men at arms. Remarkably, he has made the world of the EOD entertaining, occasionally hilarious, and always harrowing. His honesty is refreshing and the book is written with such candor and openness that one can't help but root for him. And did I mention that it is entertaining? There were scenes at work with the bomb disposal unit where I found myself holding my breath.”
—Anthony Swofford, author ofJarhead
“Do you want to know a little something about our war in Iraq? Begin withThe Long Walk,
Brian Castner’s elegant, superbly written story about the bomb-disposal guys. As you read think of Alan Sillitoe’sThe Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Castner gives us that steady rhythm of one foot in front of the other. Think of Vonnegut’sSlaughterhouse-Five. Here is the reality of the exhausted mind, and of profound thought wandering all Creation: this is what I saw, this is what I did, this is what I have become. It’s the story of the long walk out, as they say, from the Humvee to the bomb in the street, and the long look back.”
—Larry Heinemann, author of the National Book Award-winningPaco’s StoryandClose Quarters