The Good Soldiers

By: David Finkel

Narrated by: Mark Boyett

Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

It was the last-chance moment of the war. In January 2007, President George W. Bush announced a new strategy for Iraq. He called it "the surge". "Many listening tonight will ask why this effort will succeed when previous operations to secure Baghdad did not. Well, here are the differences," he told a skeptical nation.

Among those listening were the young, optimistic Army infantry soldiers of the 2-16, the battalion nicknamed the Rangers. About to head to a vicious area of Baghdad, they decided the difference would be them. Fifteen months later, the soldiers returned home forever changed.

Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter David Finkel was with them in Bagdad almost every grueling step of the way. What was the true story of the surge? Was it really a success? Those are the questions he grapples with in his remarkable report from the front lines.

Combining the action of Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down with the literary brio of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, The Good Soldiers is an unforgettable work of reportage. And in telling the story of these good soldiers, the heroes and the ruined, David Finkel has also produced an eternal tale - not just of the Iraq War, but of all wars, for all time.

©2009 Dave Finkel (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

100 Notable Books of 2009 (The New York Times)

Best Books of 2009 (Publishers Weekly)

Best Nonfiction of 2009 (The Boston Globe)

Best Reads of 2009 (Slate.com)

Best Books of 2009: Nonfiction (Christian Science Monitor)

"Finkel's keen firsthand reportage, its grit and impact only heightened by the literary polish of his prose, gives us one of the best accounts yet of the American experience in Iraq." ( Publishers Weekly)

"A superb account of the burdens soldiers bear." ( Kirkus Reviews)

Phenomenal book

This book ells the story of the soldiers, commander and occasionally the interpreters of 2-16 during their deployment in the years 2007-08.

The book is told from a neutral stand point and does not delve into the politics of the war, or the surge though the author is a little harsh on Colonel K. The 2-16 was deployed into a very difficult situation and the cost was high in both physical and mental casualties.

The author and narrator do an excellent job portraying the human cost of the war and for this alone the book is worth listening.

Tillman story continues….if you are interested!

The story will focus around an infantry unit commanded by Ralph Kauzlarich during the “surge” (2007-2008)…who by the way, was the Ranger Regimental XO for Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. Kauzlarich conducted the second investigation into Tillman’s death. I have no respect for our government using Tillman’s death as advertising…but I couldn’t help but feel poetic justice as Kauzlarich faced the real impact of command…the wounded, the dead, the stress. The book is a “not so pretty look” at the war in Iraq…I commend Finkel on his work, and the time he spent…slow at times, I still must put into the MUST read category!

An eye opener and a heart string tug

A brutal open documentation of the war in the middle East and the life of the soilder

This is a must read

This is a great first-hand account of the effects of the surge in Iraq. The narrator was magnificent. Highly recommend

The Things They Still Carry

When it comes to war, America's self-image is that we're always winners. And that we're never monsters. And that each death will be justified by the achievement of some greater end goal. Such are the ideals that carry the confident men of the Ranger 2-16 Battalion, part of the 2007 troop surge, into Rustamiyah, Iraq, a violent, difficult-to-comprehend hellhole of a place that quickly begins to undercut simple truths.

To me, so much about the official decision-making behind Iraq is captured by a memory towards the end of the book. A Liberian soldier (visiting an army school in the US) expresses faith in the protective power of a sacred talisman that has carried him through many battles, then swings a knife at his own arm to prove it. The knife cuts through skin and flesh, and the man's eyes fill with astonished panic at the sight of reality's imposition on belief.

Perhaps this is war's first casualty. If so, The Good Soldiers brings that truth to readers at a visceral level, putting us in the boots of soldiers sent to make up for official misjudgment and getting us to experience things as they do. The story centers around the battalion’s leader, the ever gung-ho Lieutenant Colonel Kauzlarich, but includes about a dozen of his men in its focus. We hear the initial earnest belief of young officers that their strength and generosity will carry the day, destroying a vicious enemy and winning over the rest of the population of Iraq. We experience the shock and horror of IED attacks, the weird out-of-body unreality of watching friends and enemies die in firefights. The way those moments refuse to stop ricocheting through memory. The frustration and anger of dealing with a population that seems indifferent to America's helping hand -- and the vast disconnect between Iraqis' personal concerns and US policy assumptions. There's staring out the window and wondering if you'll have any warning of the one that kills you -- and what your last thoughts before that moment will be. The fatigue, disillusionment, resignation, burnout, and despair that come with reliving that moment over and over, with few visible signs of improvement. The alienating, dreary normalcy of returning to the States after the intensity of war (little about that experience seems to have changed since Hemingway's short story about a returned WW1 vet). The fearful, lonely life of Iraqi contractors, distrusted by American soldiers and in constant danger from their own people.

Finkel's writing is very good and gives the book more impact than most in the category. Though embedded as a journalist with the 2-16, he leaves himself entirely out of the text, and builds a narrative from interview snippets, reports, lists of details, and moments that carry layered emotions. At its best, the writing takes on a simple stream-of-consciousness feel not unlike Tim O'Brien's famous The Things They Carried. Officially apolitical, he offers no big-picture analysis, but juxtaposes different moments, images, and words in a way that challenge easy idealism. An optimistic platitude from President George W. Bush is followed with the image of an infantryman killing a dog lapping up a pool of human blood. Colonel Kauzlarich's avuncular sentiments while bestowing a medal on a dismembered 19 year old lying in a hospital bed ring hollow next to the young man's blank stare, and the obvious fact he will never again live anything approaching a normal life. There is the visual of a soldier's charred remains being removed from a bomb-wrecked Humvee, where he may or may not have died before the flames engulfed him. There's a tortured human corpse haunting the sewage tank of a building chosen as an operations base like a plot element from the novel Catch-22, because no one wants to be the one to remove it.

These are gut-wrenching images that hurt and anger to think about, and there are others like them. It's all the stuff implicit in countless Reuters articles about IEDs and counterinsurgency operations. All the stuff that Americans, for or against the occupation of Iraq, have formed various abstract opinions about, but are seldom made to contemplate in terms of their horrific costs to real human beings, who can't be blamed for signing up to be what all countries expect from their soldiers. For this reason, I consider The Good Soldiers and other books like it necessary reading for all Americans, regardless of your politics.

For me, the takeaway lesson came in the last chapter, as waves of insurgents swarm out of Sadr City, attacking government sites and threatening the 2-16. To Colonel Kauzlarich, it's validation, proof that the insurgency is growing desperate. To some of his men, it's one more demonstration of the irredeemable f-ed-up-ness of Iraq. But no one really knows. The battle, like the book, ends without obvious conclusion, the 2-16 shipped home again, and no one seems any better tuned-in to what's going on in the minds of Iraqis or why. And therein lies the tragedy of goodness alone: it's not understanding. Was the war worth it? We simply don’t know, and it’s out of our hands now. Meanwhile, our own crumbling democracy awaits our salvation.

Embedded beneath perspective

What a horrendous loss of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by so many American men and women following the political and military incursion into Iraq. And, as Finkle often pointed out, was it worth the cost? We are led to experience the the war from Finkle's embeded perspective of the 216th Batallion headed by Lt. Col Ralph Kauzlarich. This is his strength and weakness: being "embedded," and in only one corner of the war.

His ability to convey the "Pucker" factor of war, and the unique pucker factor of the Iraq war regarding IEDs and EFPs is one of his greatest contributions. The related revelation from this book is how IEDs and EFPs just come out of nowhere, uncontrolled, leaving limited ability to plan or strategize in order to avoid the violence. Previous wars pitted intelligence and strategy against enemy violence and gave the impression of being able to minimize violence. That feeling of control appears to be completely translated into sheer dread and fear while riding around in humvee's and having no control of when death from IED violence may strike. It even appears that this phenomenon affects the political as well as military levels of uncertainty of how to measure the value of the war itself.

The limits of this embedded reporter Finkle is reflected in his ingratiating portrayal of the unit's leader, Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich as well as his use of George W. Bush quotes. The character of Lt. Kauzlarich is seriously called into question in that he said (see ESPN) that the family of Pat Tillman was not at peace with his death because they are atheists who believe their son is now, in Kauzlarich's words, "worm dirt."

I think that the "Good Soldiers" as represented by Finkle certainly applies to the men on the front lines, but seems to apply less and less as one goes up the ranks.

If you have PTSD-- DO NOT READ!

Where does The Good Soldiers rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

First- My daughter fought in Iraq and came back with PTSD. Now I really understand why.

I would not rank it high- It was educational and interesting, but way too intense for me.

What other book might you compare The Good Soldiers to and why?

I can't think of one. It was a story of young people burning alive and a war lived from day to day, that from the ground seemed futile.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

The narrator was alright, but even in the happy moments he was very serious.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Too many, if by "moved" you mean sickened.

Any additional comments?

I gave it a decent rating, and it was a story worth knowing because the story is true. If it had been fiction it would have been a terrible story to purposefully impose on anyone. I am serious when I say that depressed people or soldiers with PTSD should not read it.

Riveting, Sobering, Important

At times this book was tough to listen to, but it was never uninteresting. Written by a journalist who spent a year with an army unit based in some of Baghdad's toughest neighborhoods, this is a mostly first-hand account of the US "Surge" in the Iraq War. Because it is so personal, what we see of the Surge is not the "big picture" we're so used to seeing, but rather, we see the storm from its eye. It is a sobering view.

Boyett's narration is great. Finkel is a very gifted writer, but he sometimes can't resist a clever turn of phrase or overly poetic language (not by any means poorly done, but somehow distracting here) which can occasionally be a disservice to his book.

Of course, there is no book or work of art that can fully convey the horror and heroism of armed conflict, but "The Good Soldiers" does an excellent job. Finkel is unsentimental and unflinching, but still manages to convey a bit of his own humanity.

Sobering account of a Infantry Battalion in Iraq

Although sometimes negative in tone, it's a worthwhile picture of the challenge of facing, day after day, the threat of death or maiming from IEDs. It also provides an understanding of the catastrophic nature of the injuries caused by such devices. Worth reading for an understanding of the challenges faced on the new battlefields.

Wow Powerful book!

Believable & inspiring! A look at what height young men can achieve fighting for their ideals & for their brothers at arms. Made me feel great full for the troops who truly understand AMERICAN values & why we are so privileged to live in the land of the feee and home of the brave. Sadly that may not be a viable option for some we endeavor to protect.