War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

De: Chris Hedges

Narrado por: Chris Hedges

As a veteran war correspondent, Chris Hedges has survived ambushes in Central America, imprisonment in Sudan, and a beating by Saudi military police. He has seen children murdered for sport in Gaza and petty thugs elevated into war heroes in the Balkans. Hedges, who is also a former divinity student, has seen war at its worst and knows too well that to those who pass through it, war can be exhilarating and even addictive: "It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living."

Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting the most basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.

©2007 Chris Hedges (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"A brilliant, thoughtful, timely, and unsettling book....Abounds with Hedges' harrowing and terribly moving eyewitness accounts...Powerful and informative." ( The New York Times Book Review)
"The best kind of war journalism: It is bitterly poetic and ruthlessly philosophical. It sends out a powerful message to people contemplating the escalation of the 'war against terrorism'." ( Los Angeles Times)

Amazing book!

Great book awesome story it is definitely worth it enjoyed every second of it I would definitely come back and listen to it again maybe even a third

The myth of war

The myth of war exposed. The motivation for war considered. The consequences of war and the experience of war. It covers many of these aspects. I Appreciate the book for its honesty treatment of the subjects.

Augments a reading of the book, too

I'm a huge Hedges fan but purchased the audio book to listen to it with my husband on a car vacation. First published in 2003, during the end of the Bush era, what it says holds up quite well, and as a faithful reader of Hedges at Truthdig, lays the foundation for much of what Hedges still writes.

Hearing it read by Hedges himself makes the words still more thoughtful.

This is a book that I go back to over and over. My husband works with veterans. I work with kids whose parents are deployed or have been deployed and I hear the _echoes_ of this book many times.

I think about Hedges' final message repetitively. If we are going to unleash the dogs of war, we should always be aware of what the _ongoing_ costs are. And Hedges uniquely lays out a discussion of what those costs are. Clearly, the wars we are prosecuting in the middle east are not "worth it", never were, and continue to not be worth it.

Worth a read and definitely worth a listen.

25 years after I read this book...

... I'm still stunned by its message as well as the imagery it portrays. I met Chris Hedges through the internet as he was giving his "CALLING ALL REBELS" lecture to arapt assembly. I went right out and purchased the book and read it through once and then read it again two cats the things that I'd missed in the dialogue. Chris is an amazing spring of the issues that face us, that have faced us it and that will continue unless we flip this script and change the narratives. But that's being a little Pollyanna-esque, isn't it? Cruises examples of what happens to humanity once it goes down that rabbit hole of religious nationalism and all of its offspring, it and after decades and generations of the same kind of parapet, we just do it over and over again. It's almost like it's by Design to sort of a scrooge could it kind of helped decline the excess population, or something along those lines. I have five Sons who have given me five grandchildren, boys and girls, and sometimes I feel like Mr Andrews from the Titanic as he was setting the clock and talking to Rose, he states that" I wish I would have built you a stronger boat column rows". Man comment do I feel that sentiment with regard to my family.

But enough about all that, the book is a wonderful depiction of our 'darker angels', but it also shows the milk of human kindness and the capacity to love. It describes those who would report on such events and photographs and put their lives on the line to tell the story, much like the author. Totally worth the read very

Extremely Powerful

Hedges is a writer that doesn’t shy away from describing in detail the vicious brutality of war and the deleterious effects of our alienation to war’s reality. His testimonies on his experiences as a war correspondent are depressing, shocking, and, in an odd way, relieving. That’s because he lifts the nationalist veil from our eyes. To peer through the propaganda that we are force fed from birth about the ideas of the nobility of the warrior and the holiness of the cause.

It is a process that shouldn’t be comforting or enjoyable. And I’m relieved that there are people in the world like Hedges who aren’t afraid to tell us the unabashed truth in the aims of maybe, just maybe, we can care enough to try to make a better world.