Generation Kill

Evan Wright was a Rolling Stone reporter when he was embedded with the First Reconnaissance Battalion of the United States Marine Corps during the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq. Generation Kill is the book that came out of it.

Wright stayed close to a single Humvee and the four marines in it for the duration. The book is built from those long days of riding into combat together. The dialogue is unfiltered and unflattering to almost everyone involved, including the writer himself.

The later HBO series adapted the book pretty closely, and many readers come to the book after watching it. Both reward each other.

Generation Kill is now a standard text in the literature of the wars after September 11. For readers who have read Sebastian Junger’s War or Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War, this belongs on the same shelf. Wright’s voice is sharper and more profane than either.