My War: Killing Time in Iraq - Hardcover

Buzzell, Colby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399153276 ISBN 13: 9780399153273

Publisher: Putnam Adult, 2005

Synopsis

Recounts the personal experiences of a U.S. Army soldier who served in Iraq as a member of the controversial Stryker Brigade Combat Team, a tour of duty during which he engaged in dangerous firefights and raids and kept an online Web log describing his war experiences. 75,000 first printing.

About this title

Review

My War is a book that will challenge many of the most common assumptions about the Iraq War and the people fighting in it. Colby Buzzell, the book's author and a U.S. Army machine-gunner who did a year-long tour in Iraq, is not the stereotypical small-town soldier from a Red State. He grew up in San Francisco eating pot brownies at the Haight-Ashbury Street Fair, skateboarding, and listening to punk and heavy metal. He supported Ralph Nader for president, reads George Orwell, and his dad worked in Silicon Valley. But he was sick of his "life in oblivion," bouncing around from one dead-end job to another. As Buzzell writes in his typically gritty prose, "I didn’t want to get all old and have my bratty grandkids ask me, 'Grandpa, where were you during the Iraq war?' and me going, 'Oh, I was busy doing temp work and data entry for 12 bucks an hour.'"

In search of adventure, Buzzell joined the army and got sent to Iraq. First stationed in the ultra-dangerous Sunni Triangle, he quickly mastered how to use the M240 Bravo machine gun: "Just get behind that muthafucka and just fire it." His fellow soldiers, mostly hip-hop fans or headbanging metal-heads like him, killed time watching porn on mini-portable DVD players or listening to Metallica on their iPods while on patrol. Long boring spells were interrupted by wild fits of confusing action. On one of Buzzell's first missions, two platoons fired thousands of rounds at near point-blank range at an unarmed Iraqi civilian. Amazingly, he survived. Out of boredom, Buzzell started a blog, one of the first by an ordinary "Joe" grunt in Iraq. It became a media sensation and got Buzzell in trouble with the REMFs ("Rear Echelon Mutha Fuckers") because of his less-than-glamorous portrayal of the war and his superiors, whom he accuses of constantly lying to the public and the soldiers under their command. My War may be disappointing to readers looking for deeper introspections on the moral questions behind the war, but it is a pretty convincing case against the claim that everything in Iraq is going fine. --Alex Roslin

From the Back Cover

"My War by Colby Buzzell is nothing less than the soul of an extremely interesting human being at war on our behalf in Iraq."- Kurt Vonnegut."Buzzell's My War, written in a style reminiscent of Hunter S.Thompson and Allen Ginsberg, is fueled by an antiauthority, punk-rock attitude."- Poets and Writers magazine."Incredible accounts of combat from a grunt's-eye-view."- Rolling Stone Magazine."Remarkably blunt, honest and often hilarious."- Chicago Sun-Times."Striking....Buzzell tells the story of his year in Iraq with a steeliness that's both sincere and chilling."- People Magazine."Profound, profane....told with irresistible gallows humor and anger devoid of self consciousness. Give[s] us a much deeper understanding of the war."- Atlanta Journal Constitution."In gutsy, sometimes profane prose, he takes you on a soldier's-eye view of the front lines of the war."- Newsweek."Raw, sardonic, and thrashingly honest, My War is a stellar grunt's-eye view of the Iraq war."- Mens Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Putnam Adult
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0399153276
• ISBN 13: 9780399153273
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368