About the Author:
Mike Tucker is a Marine infantry veteran with a Special Operations background, and an
author. He broke Burmese Army lines in 2002, with Karen guerrillas, and has investigated
war crimes in Burma and northern Iraq. In 2003, he journeyed throughout Iraqi Kurdistan, interviewing Kurds from all walks of life. Later, he joined US Army snipers, scouts, light infantry, paratroopers, and Special Forces commandos for nineteen weeks on raids and patrols in northern and western Iraq. He remained in Iraq for fourteen months. Mike Tucker is presently in Afghanistan as an embedded author, with American paratroopers and Special Forces, from April 2005-April 2006
From Publishers Weekly:
Join Big Hungry, Kentucky Rife, Serpico and Jedi Knight for a harrowing journey into the heart of the Iraqi insurgency. A former Marine infantryman, Tucker follows the warriors of the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul and the 82nd Airborne and 10th Mountain Divisions in Fallujah during 19 weeks of urban warfare in late 2003 and early 2004. In declaratives one might describe as debased Hemingway on speed, Tucker tags along for counter-IED (improvised explosive devices) patrols and zero-dark-30 (predawn) raids, capturing the adrenaline-laced urgency of urban combat against a hidden enemy. His conversations with troopers are refreshingly authentic; his analysis of the politics of Iraq tends toward open advocacy for the Kurds and a separate state of Kurdistan. (Tucker is the author of Hell Is Over: Voices of the Kurds After Saddam.) But his gritty firsthand account is packed with detail: from the slow ballet of "scoping roof tops and alley corners," the excruciating tension of disarming IEDs and the frenetic choreography of urban combat to the children who are never far away and are always quick with a smile, a wave and an enthusiastic "Amerikee!" Several impressive accounts of the second Iraq War have appeared already from embedded journalists, but few are as personal and edgy as Tucker's. (May)
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