Tear-Jerking, best read of summer

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	• The Long Road Home: A Story of War and Family Martha Raddatz Putnam Adult, 2007 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 66 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Classic War Novel

This book is about the soldiers who fought the initial Iraqi insurgency and their families back home. It is a book that seizes your psyche and compels you to read it through to the end. The author weaves a fabric of todays military including the soldiers, the leaders, and the families of the soldiers. She leaves nothing out of her story that can only be considered a modern classic war novel. She captures fear in its rawest form as experienced by the soldiers caught in an ambush and in the wives who shoulder the burden of being a singular parent of the family. As a veteran Viet Nam, I felt every page of this book as if I had lived it personally. It brought back an avalanche of memories and I am glad I read it. I can highly recommend her book to everyone.

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Tear-Jerking, best read of summer

This book was absolutely amazing. I am not a cryer and I ended up crying the last two chapters of this book. I have many friends in the military and support the troops no matter what. This book is for anyone, especially those who do not have a military connection. They will learn from this book and what it is really like to serve in the military and what it is like to be the families of military men and women. Great book and although I cried it was more than worth it. I have recommended this book to over 4 people who enjoyed it as much as I did and have recommended to friends of their own.

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What The Book Does Not Include

I think Ms. Raddatz has done a great service by showing how the members of the Armed Services and their families see and live this war. However, I was disappointed that some questions were not asked in the narration. These would include: Why were the troops sent out in an open truck into ambush situations (more than once) after the first platoon was pinned down? Who was responsible for such a poor decision, and why did it take two badly-mauled open trucks for HQ to ban non-armored vehicles from going into Sadr City? Nearly all the serious casualties were in these open trucks.

Did any soldiers ever ask the question, what are we doing here? Why are we in the middle of a civil war in Iraq- a country that never did us any harm? I cannot believe that none of the soldiers and officers asked that question. The author never reported any such questions.

I also wish that there was an Iraqi perspective on what was happening. Except for mentionning the interpreter whose views we never heard, there was no Iraqi voice at all. By such an ommission they were all depicted as the 'enemy'. How about the family whose house was used as a safe haven by the platoon that was pinned down? Could the author have gone back later and asked their perspective on what happened to them? Some soldiers did go back at a later date and take photos of that alley and house.

All in all it's still a very good book, but it could have been better.

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True Account

Martha Raddatz has it down cold. I've read nearly every book about the war in Iraq since I returned. This one is the best, hands down. I was working in the operations center in Baghdad and there were incidents throughout the country on that fateful day. Not just the one's Martha wrote about. These attacks were the culmination of many months of failed U.S. policy and the beginning of the Iraqi fight against the U.S. occupation. Read this book.

A sobering book

Bookstore shelves already are groaning under the weight of volumes analyzing the geopolitics of the Iraq War and chronicling the decisions that took the United States into a war that has now lasted longer than our involvement in World War II. Anyone looking for a gripping account of that war from the perspective of the soldiers who have to fight it everyday need not search any further than THE LONG ROAD HOME for an unflinching portrayal of its harsh reality.

Veteran ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz has chosen to concentrate on a tiny slice of the conflict --- what she describes as "perhaps the most crucial turning point in the Iraq War." Late in the afternoon of April 4, 2004, Palm Sunday, a 20-man platoon left its base to accompany Iraqi sewage trucks sarcastically named "honey wagons" on a routine patrol through the streets of Sadr City, a six-square-mile slum in which 2.5 million Shiite Muslims live. Before nightfall, the platoon found itself locked in mortal combat with thousands of members of Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sad'rs Mahdi Army and Iraqi civilians whose hatred of the American soldiers reached an almost suicidal mania.

What makes this book such a gripping read is its laser-like focus on a battle that lasted barely two hours. Raddatz's account feels as if it proceeds almost in real time, as the soldiers of the First Platoon, holed up in buildings in the heart of Sadr City, realize they have no chance to fight their way out of this urban nightmare and must depend on the courage of their fellow soldiers to save them from annihilation. Despite those heroic rescue efforts, including bravery that resulted in the award of Silver Stars to two of the soldiers involved in the battle, seven members of the platoon and one rescuer lost their lives.

Raddatz's writing is so vivid and full of riveting detail it's apparent she had extensive access to all of the principals involved in these events. Indeed, at times it's hard to believe she was not on the scene. The pace of the battle scenes is swift and relentless, slowed only occasionally by the insertion of details of the urban geography or references to the military units involved. Most readers will find themselves skimming in their haste to learn the soldiers' fate.

Unlike many who have written about the Iraq War, Raddatz does not have an obvious political agenda. At the same time, while her writing is cool and factual she isn't reluctant to spotlight handicaps, like the shortage of adequately armored vehicles, the gaps in the training of our troops and the apparent lack of readiness to deal with a situation on the ground that changed in an instant from what many still thought was a peacekeeping mission to all-out urban guerilla warfare. It's hard to suppress feelings of anger at these deficiencies, but those emotions quickly mingle with ones of admiration at the skill and bravery with which our soldiers fight.

As compelling as her account of the Palm Sunday battle is, Raddatz doesn't confine her attention to that engagement. Alongside it, she recounts the hardships of the soldiers' families at Fort Hood, Texas, learning of the battle on a placid Sunday afternoon and then having to wait, in some cases for days, to learn the fate of their loved ones. We come away from the stories of life on the home front with a renewed appreciation of the sacrifice these family members make when their spouses and parents go off to war.

As of this writing, almost 3,500 United States military personnel have died in Iraq, and recent months have brought an escalation in the number of casualties. Few Americans are neutral in their opinions about this country's policy, but even those most passionate in their political views probably don't pause very often to think about what daily life is like for the soldiers in combat there. THE LONG ROAD HOME offers a useful corrective to that state of mind. It reminds us that each soldier's life is precious and every death is singular.

Raddatz has said that she wanted readers "to put themselves in the place of these soldiers and their families. I want them to feel what they felt." She has done that with skill and sensitivity in this sobering book.

--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

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