Thank You For Your Service (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
I read the predecessor to this book, 'The Good Soldiers' after receiving a free copy at a writer's conference I heard David Finkel speak at last year. I approached it with low expectations due to the 'freeness' factor and had to repent in full after realizing it was one of the best nonfiction books I had ever come across. 'Thank You For Your Service' may be better than that. As a fledgeling journalist myself this book will stand on my shelf as what I hope to be able to do one day. The reporting alone is astonishing, Finkel managed to somehow make himself invisible in the middle of fierce domestic conflicts and then render them with compassion but brutal honesty. When you combine that reporting with writing that made my jaw drop, sentences I stood in awe of, passages that left me wondering how to replicate his skills, you have a book like few others.Having tried and failed to finish 'All The President's Men' by Finkel's predecessors at the Washington Post, Woodward and Bernstein, I think this book achieves what they failed to. The story doesn't get lost in the reporting, nor vice versa.Read the first book first as it adds to the power of this one, then read this, then write to David Finkel and plead with him to hurry up and write something else. I read recently that Spielberg and Day-Lewis are considering making a film of this book. I'm relieved as anyone lesser than those two would fill me with dread at what they might do to it. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE presents a whole new insight into the psychological problems of our returning servicemen and women, wounded by the severe stress of maintaining constant vigilance in war-time settings. A journalistic reconstruction of the daily lives of real families, destabilized by memories of the horrors they've seen, brain damaged from having survived them, or trying to cope with physical injuries such as the loss of limbs or eyes, death or suicide and how we are attempting to heal their battered spirits. The high suicide rate for young people returning from the service has finally been acknowledged by public health services and better awareness of mental health has given rise to more availability of treatment. This is a book that everyone should read to fully appreciate what we ask of our young men and women when we send them to war.
What do You think about Thank You For Your Service (2013)?
This book should be assigned reading for everyone in the USA: it's revealing and devastating.
—Erii
Excellent read. Very accessible and intriguing. Like reading a documentary - it was so real!
—byron
Heartbreaking, eye-opening and truthful. Should be a must read for every American.
—peaches
