What Every Person Should Know About War
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Acclaimed New York Times journalist and author Chris Hedges offers a critical — and fascinating — lesson in the dangerous realities of our age: a stark look at the effects of war on combatants. Utterly lacking in rhetoric or dogma, this manual relies instead on bare fact, frank description, and a spare question-and-answer format. Hedges allows U.S. military documentation of the brutalizing physical and psychological consequences of combat to speak for itself.
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Hedges poses dozens of questions that young soldiers might ask about combat, and then answers them by quoting from medical and psychological studies.
* What are my chances of being wounded or killed if we go to war?
* What does it feel like to get shot?
* What do artillery shells do to you?
* What is the most painful way to get wounded?
* Will I be afraid?
* What could happen to me in a nuclear attack?
* What does it feel like to kill someone?
* Can I withstand torture?
* What are the long-term consequences of combat stress?
* What will happen to my body after I die?
This profound and devastating portrayal of the horrors to which we subject our armed forces stands as a ringing indictment of the glorification of war and the concealment of its barbarity.
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