“I found myself tearing up, gagging at times, as I turned the pages.”
This generally isn’t what you like to read to begin a review of your book. But I couldn’t be happier, more humbled, or more moved with the review of Kill Anything That Moves by wartime aid worker-turned-reporter Tom Fox in America magazine. The piece is personal and poignant and concludes: “Kill Anything That Moves should become mandatory reading in all U.S. history classes and in classrooms where warfare is taught. But can we face the dark side of our military policies? Can we, as a nation, learn from the past? I am not optimistic. Reading this book and then passing it along could possibly pave the way. We owe this much to the ghosts of wars past and those to come.”
Nick Turse’s “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam” is not only one of the most important books ever written about the Vietnam conflict but provides readers with an unflinching account of the nature of modern industrial warfare… Turse, finally, grasps that the trauma that plagues most combat veterans is a result not only of what they witnessed or endured, but what they did. This trauma, shame, guilt and self-revulsion push many combat veterans—whether from Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan—to escape into narcotic and alcoholic fogs or commit suicide. By the end of Turse’s book, you understand why.
BOOK REVIEW: Kill Anything That Moves’ - SFGate
I can’t help but share a glowing review of my new book from yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle. Joel Whitney calls it an “indispensable new history” and continues: “Kill Anything That Moves is a paradigm-shifting, connect-the-dots history of American atrocities that reads like a thriller; it will convince those with the stomach to read it that all these decades later Americans, certainly the military brass and the White House, still haven’t drawn the right lesson from Vietnam.” You can read the full review here.
I’m reeling from a exceptionally flattering review in BookForum by national security expert (and former military-intelligence case officer in Vietnam) Jeff Stein who calls Kill Anything that Moves “Astounding… Meticulous, extraordinary, and oddly moving.”
(via fatal vision - bookforum.com / current issue)
If you are faint-hearted, you might want to keep some smelling salts nearby when you read it. It’s that bad… The truth hurts. This is an important book
Sharply focused…powerful… With his urgent but highly readable style, Turse takes us through this landscape of failed policies, government mendacity and Vietnamese anguish, a familiar topography for those steeped in the many histories — the best ones by journalists — of this 1964-75 debacle. But Turse is up to something different and even more provocative: He delves into the secret history of U.S.-led atrocities. He has brought to his book an impressive trove of new research — archives explored and eyewitnesses interviewed in the United States and Vietnam. With superb narrative skill, he spotlights a troubling question: Why, with all the evidence collected by the military at the time of the war, were atrocities not prosecuted?… Will we ever come to terms with this shameful aspect of war? Turse has given us, at least, one step forward.
A book I read over the weekend absolutely blew my mind. It’s one of those types of books that shakes your world view about something, in this case the U.S. government’s war in Vietnam. It is an absolutely shocking book. It is entitled Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse.
I find myself blushing after reading a review of my latest book, Terminator Planet, by Asia Times’ rollicking, roving reporter Pepe Escobar. He begins:
It’s fitting that Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 has been put together by Tom Engelhardt - editor, MC of the TomDispatch website and “a national treasure”, in the correct appraisal of University of Michigan professor Juan Cole - and TomDispatch’s associate editor Nick Turse, author of the seminal 2008 study The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.
This is essentially Tom and Nick’s revised and updated body of work detailing the uber-dystopian Dronescape over the past few years - spanning everything from secret Drone Empire bases to offshore droning; a Philip Dick-style exercise on a more than plausible drone-on-drone war off East Africa in 2050; and a postscript inimitably titled, “America as a Shining Drone Upon a Hill”. It does beat fiction because it’s all fact-based.
And his conclusion, in typical Escobar-ian fashion, simply beats all:
Tom and Nick’s digital file is absolutely essential reading for contextualizing the lineaments of an already de facto surveillance state, where everyone is a suspect by definition, and the only “winner” is the military-industrial complex. Welcome to Motown as Dronetown: “Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide…” Obama and the Dronellas, anyone?
I’m speechless! Read the full review here and find the book here or by clicking the pic of the RQ-4 Global Hawk above.
(photo: USAF)
