PositiveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneIn The Fighters, New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers has threaded a delicate needle in telling the story of six U.S. service members and their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. He uses them to walk us through the bigger picture progression of the wars. He writes that his mission is to \'demystify\' those who have served on the front lines. But he is also unapologetic in hoping that their stories reveal something larger: that the misguided policies that sent them abroad have failed ... Chivers focuses on six combatants — an F-14 pilot, a Green Beret sergeant, a Navy corpsman, a helicopter pilot, an Army infantryman and a Marine lieutenant ... In these kind of accounts, the number of characters involved can often result in the reader getting confused. That may be one criticism of Bowden’s book, for instance. Chivers, though, is disciplined in keeping us focused on the subjects. It’s a testament to his reporting skills that he found such effective and willing subjects to profile and a testament to his writing skills that he did not stray from his pointed narrative arc.
David Finkel
RaveThe Minneapolis Star TribuneWhere The Good Soldiers provides a snapshot of a period of U.S. involvement in Iraq that will stand the test of time, his new work, Thank You for Your Service, is a disturbing template for what this country can expect to experience from the people we sent to war who came home different: post-traumatic stress, depression, suicide, domestic abuse, drug and alcohol problems … It's a testament to Finkel's considerable journalistic skills that this is no sentimental or clichéd work. His vivid descriptions of the minutiae of everyday life provide a fly-on-the-wall observation without judgment. The struggles of the modern soldier that many us have heard about (and some of us have written about) are painted more vividly and intimately than we've experienced before.
