The forever war

There are already many books on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and about the War on Terror - but this is something very different. In The Forever War, award-winning New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins does not analyse how these wars happened and why, or where they have succeeded or failed; instead, he captures with searing immediacy, the human experience - and tragedy - of war. We meet Iraqi insurgents and American soldiers, Afghan rebels and Taliban clerics. We travel to deserts and glaciers and mountaintops, to the scene of public amputations and executions, to suicide bombings and into the homes of the bombers themselves. The result is a visceral understanding of the War on the Terror, its victims, the people who fight it and the way these people feel.