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Title details for Uncertain Ground by Phil Klay - Available

Uncertain Ground

Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War

by Phil Klay
Josh Casaubon
Audiobook
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From the National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment and Missionaries, an astonishing fever graph of the effects of twenty years of war in a brutally divided America.

When Phil Klay left the Marines a decade ago after serving as an officer in Iraq, he found himself a part of the community of veterans who have no choice but to grapple with the meaning of their wartime experiences—for themselves and for the country. American identity has always been bound up in war—from the revolutionary war of our founding, to the civil war that ended slavery, to the two world wars that launched America as a superpower. What did the current wars say about who we are as a country, and how should we respond as citizens?
 
Unlike in previous eras of war, relatively few Americans have had to do any real grappling with the endless, invisible conflicts of the post-9/11 world; in fact, increasingly few people are even aware they are still going on. It is as if these wars are a dark star with a strong gravitational force that draws a relatively small number of soldiers and their families into its orbit while remaining inconspicuous to most other Americans. In the meantime, the consequences of American military action abroad may be out of sight and out of mind, but they are very real indeed.
 
This chasm between the military and the civilian in American life, and the moral blind spot it has created, is one of the great themes of Uncertain Ground, Phil Klay’s powerful series of reckonings with some of our country’s thorniest concerns, written in essay form over the past ten years. In the name of what do we ask young Americans to kill, and to die? In the name of what does this country hang together? As we see at every turn in these pages, those two questions have a great deal to do with each another, and how we answer them will go a long way toward deciding where our troubled country goes from here.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 17, 2022

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593557266
      • File size: 222842 KB
      • Duration: 07:44:15

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 28, 2022
      Klay, a Marine Corps veteran and National Book Award winner (for the story collection Redeployment), makes his nonfiction debut with this incisive collection of previously published essays on the “Global War on Terror”: “a conflict that has lasted so long, and at such a low ebb that most Americans can pretend it isn’t happening.” In “We Have No Idea What We’re Doing in Iraq. We Didn’t Before We Killed Suleimani,” Klay forcefully critiques President Trump’s continuation of Obama’s “policy of airstrikes and deployments of Special Operations troops in support of local forces.” According to Klay, this tactic produced short-term military gains but undermined the stability of the government and contributed to the rise of ISIS and other insurgent groups. In one of the book’s most trenchant pieces, Klay reflects on the “moral dimension” of military service and profiles veterans whose horror at “the human cost of our wars overseas” has led them to public service and international aid work. Elsewhere, he eloquently describes his contempt for “performative rage” as a political device and calls for “civility... a style of argument that implicitly welcomes a response.” Enriched by the author’s military experiences and sharp turns of phrase (“We’re America. We’re good at violence”), this is an astute and often enraging survey of America’s forever wars.

    • Library Journal

      November 1, 2022

      Award-winning author and former U.S. Marine Klay's (Redeployment) nonfiction debut is a thoughtful and intelligent look at America's endless wars and the way we look at war in general. In this essay collection, written from 2019 through 2021, Klay notes that the majority of Americans are complacently insulated from the realities of military service and find it easy to look away. Those who serve are confused about the mission. How have these conflicts been going on so long, and still, the policy has not been made clear? War is chaos--it changes soldiers, and often, not for the better. Civilian losses and casualties in these foreign lands go unnoticed. There must be good reasons to go to war, but do we know what they are? Narrator Josh Casaubon provides a nuanced reading that captures shifts in tone and appropriately applies the intelligence and emotion that Klay deftly employs. Klay freely admits that answers aren't easy and thinks that sending service people to war shouldn't be easy, either. VERDICT This carefully narrated and thought-provoking title brings home Klay's central argument, that the duty of citizenship requires civilians to notice and weigh in. An important listen that is highly recommended for all public libraries.--Christa Van Herreweghe

      Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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