- Hardcover: 336 pages
- Publisher: Da Capo Press Inc (1 April 2010)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0306818809
- ISBN-13: 978-0306818806
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 15.3 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 946,793 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
"Wall Street Journal," 3/23/10
"Understanding that comedy best captures the irony of the human condition, Mr. Gallagher pokes fun at himself, his soldiers and those above him...Above all, "Kaboom" is about the day-to-day travails of a typical platoon set smack among thousands of disillusioned and war-weary Iraqis...Without a trace of sentimentality, Mr. Gallagher draws the reader into the everyday complexities of leading 44 soldiers from every strata of American society...One of the attractions of "Kaboom" is its first-hand reporting, unfiltered by a journalist's interpretative 'framing.' Whenever a tense situation arises, whenever bullets start flying, Mr. Gallagher and his soldiers rush to the scene and instinctively take charge through pure force--and we're right at their side. Mr. Gallagher brings the reader down to the stinking streets, through the sewer water and into meetings with cunning sheiks and sycophants...Mr. Gallagher is too modest, and too ironic, to tout his own accomplishments, so I'll do it for him: He is a classic representative of the U.S. military, a force that imposed its will, both physical and moral, to shatter al Qaeda in Iraq and quash the Shiite-Sunni civil war and that is now withdrawing with honor, leaving Iraq a much better place than under Saddam Hussein. Mr. Gallagher's platoon served in chaos and brought order. His book tells us what a grind it was. Victory over the insurgency wasn't foreordained; it took the work of gritty soldiers and leaders."
"Library Journal," 4/1/10
"[Gallagher's] exceptional narrative technique makes the soldier in-group cant both believable and coherent; his relentless pursuit of sanity in the midst of a chaotic storm of IEDs, policy changes, sheiks, civilians, and baffling missions makes this blog-based memoir an exciting read reminiscent of Anthony Swofford's "Jarhead.""
"Zink" magazine, April 2010
""Kaboom" is nothing short of purely honest, unabashedly descriptive and unexpected
"Understanding that comedy best captures the irony of the human condition, Mr. Gallagher pokes fun at himself, his soldiers and those above him...Above all, "Kaboom" is about the day-to-day travails of a typical platoon set smack among thousands of disillusioned and war-weary Iraqis...Without a trace of sentimentality, Mr. Gallagher draws the reader into the everyday complexities of leading 44 soldiers from every strata of American society...One of the attractions of "Kaboom" is its first-hand reporting, unfiltered by a journalist's interpretative 'framing.' Whenever a tense situation arises, whenever bullets start flying, Mr. Gallagher and his soldiers rush to the scene and instinctively take charge through pure force--and we're right at their side. Mr. Gallagher brings the reader down to the stinking streets, through the sewer water and into meetings with cunning sheiks and sycophants...Mr. Gallagher is too modest, and too ironic, to tout his own accomplishments, so I'll do it for him: He is a classic representative of the U.S. military, a force that imposed its will, both physical and moral, to shatter al Qaeda in Iraq and quash the Shiite-Sunni civil war and that is now withdrawing with honor, leaving Iraq a much better place than under Saddam Hussein. Mr. Gallagher's platoon served in chaos and brought order. His book tells us what a grind it was. Victory over the insurgency wasn't foreordained; it took the work of gritty soldiers and leaders."
"Library Journal," 4/1/10
"[Gallagher's] exceptional narrative technique makes the soldier in-group cant both believable and coherent; his relentless pursuit of sanity in the midst of a chaotic storm of IEDs, policy changes, sheiks, civilians, and baffling missions makes this blog-based memoir an exciting read reminiscent of Anthony Swofford's "Jarhead.""
"Zink" magazine, April 2010
""Kaboom" is nothing short of purely honest, unabashedly descriptive and unexpected
Book Description
The book the US Army tried to ban...
--This text refers to the
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The best guide to counter insurgency since The Junior Officer's Reading Club by Patrick Hennessy, showing the advantages of intelligence gathering and analysis over gung ho shoot all the black hats, and that superiors who do not get out on the ground and do some personal soldiering are often a bigger menace than the enemy.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
82 reviews
56 of 64 people found the following review helpful
Engaging ground-level war memoir
1 Mar 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Junior officer Matt Gallagher parlayed his 15 minutes of fame as a widely-read military blogger into a contract for this memoir of his 15-month deployment in Iraq, where he was assigned to lead a cavalry platoon in counterinsurgency duties in a small desert municipality. Later, he gets in trouble when he submits an unauthorized blog entry complaining about an irrational promotion that takes him away from his beloved platoon, but he gets kicked upstairs anyway and spends nearly half of his deployment as an intelligence captain near Sadr City. Gallagher's sympathy, and his strongest material, lies with the first section of the memoir in which he is actually leading soldiers in dangerous situations -- he wisely emphasizes this part of his war experience in the book.
It's interesting to see what modern war looks like, and Gallagher writes an engaging picture of it. Counterinsurgency is more like what we would think of as policing than the types of battles we associate with war in the movies -- diplomacy and the coolheadedness not to shoot in panic situations are more important to his mission than violence. Throughout his deployment, neither Gallagher nor anyone in his unit is injured in combat or fires upon anyone. The greatest loss to his unit comes in an accidental fire that critically burns a member of his platoon; the greatest loss of innocence he experiences is when he gives a conditional order to fire, even though circumstances make it unnecessary for his men to shoot anyone on his orders. But some military experience is universal, and the usual ground-level gripes about the bizarre and labyrinthine American military bureaucracy get a thorough airing here. (You'd think after all this time we'd have figured a way around that.)
Considering the author's blogger origin and his book's subtitle ("Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War"), I expected a more colloquial, Diablo Cody-style book, but Gallagher aims a little higher than that on the literary scale. A talented writer, he often succeeds in being more lyrical and evocative than I expected. But the guy's young and pretty well satisfied with himself, and that comes through too in some ill-advised metaphors and some attempts at poetical, stream-of-consciousness interludes that seemed to me to overreach his talent (your mileage, of course, may vary). As he did in the military, Gallagher sets high standards for himself as a writer -- I guess I can't fault him for that. But this book would have been nearly as good if it had been written half as carefully, since its greatest value is in the vivid characters Gallagher evokes and his stereotype-busting descriptions of the role of the private soldier and junior officer in twenty-first century war.
It's interesting to see what modern war looks like, and Gallagher writes an engaging picture of it. Counterinsurgency is more like what we would think of as policing than the types of battles we associate with war in the movies -- diplomacy and the coolheadedness not to shoot in panic situations are more important to his mission than violence. Throughout his deployment, neither Gallagher nor anyone in his unit is injured in combat or fires upon anyone. The greatest loss to his unit comes in an accidental fire that critically burns a member of his platoon; the greatest loss of innocence he experiences is when he gives a conditional order to fire, even though circumstances make it unnecessary for his men to shoot anyone on his orders. But some military experience is universal, and the usual ground-level gripes about the bizarre and labyrinthine American military bureaucracy get a thorough airing here. (You'd think after all this time we'd have figured a way around that.)
Considering the author's blogger origin and his book's subtitle ("Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War"), I expected a more colloquial, Diablo Cody-style book, but Gallagher aims a little higher than that on the literary scale. A talented writer, he often succeeds in being more lyrical and evocative than I expected. But the guy's young and pretty well satisfied with himself, and that comes through too in some ill-advised metaphors and some attempts at poetical, stream-of-consciousness interludes that seemed to me to overreach his talent (your mileage, of course, may vary). As he did in the military, Gallagher sets high standards for himself as a writer -- I guess I can't fault him for that. But this book would have been nearly as good if it had been written half as carefully, since its greatest value is in the vivid characters Gallagher evokes and his stereotype-busting descriptions of the role of the private soldier and junior officer in twenty-first century war.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
The real deal
20 April 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
As a retired LTC and combat veteran, I found Kaboom hard to put down. It offers a platoon-level gritty look at what happens outside the wire where the real conflict is found. I've nothing against the desk jockeys who enable the action, so long as they don't impede it (sometimes they do). LT G gets dirty with the troops and into the scary places where things are happening--namely, missions of substance. While some things don't change in war, every war has its own unique touches, vocabulary, and frustrations. His depiction of the diverse people, both US and Iraqi, are outstanding. Every war has its characters, heroes, and screw-ups. I came away from this book with a better appreciation of the feel of the war. Vividly depicted are the conflicts with higher-ups, the various dangers on the ground, responding to change, funny stuff happening, and all very human, very real. This should be required reading for Officers Basic, every branch.
36 of 42 people found the following review helpful
Impressed
13 Mar 2010
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
My copy of Kaboom arrived Thursday at 2pm. I started reading it at 3:30 pm expecting to knock out a chapter or two a day until I'd finished it. By 6:53 pm that same day I had finished the entire book. It drew me in within the first three paragraphs and didn't let go. Well written account of what it was like over there dealing with the complex, wild world of COIN while dealing with sheiks who want to make a difference in their country, or sheiks who only want to make a buck.
Superiors out to make a name for themselves at the expense of their character, our how tight the common Soldier bonds with other Soldiers of all races and nationalities that they may have never even spoken to had they passed each other on the streets as civilians.
If you're looking for intense combat,with bullets flying on every page then go pick up a few copies of a Sgt Rock comic book. If you want a realistic look into a 15 month deployment on the tail end of The Surge in a COIN fight while trying to maintain your sanity and sense of purpose,while staying true to yourself,your country,and your Soldiers and while managing to make sense of this period of the war that the Soldiers were living,scarifying,fighting and dying in while the rest of America was at the mall,then this book is for you.
Superiors out to make a name for themselves at the expense of their character, our how tight the common Soldier bonds with other Soldiers of all races and nationalities that they may have never even spoken to had they passed each other on the streets as civilians.
If you're looking for intense combat,with bullets flying on every page then go pick up a few copies of a Sgt Rock comic book. If you want a realistic look into a 15 month deployment on the tail end of The Surge in a COIN fight while trying to maintain your sanity and sense of purpose,while staying true to yourself,your country,and your Soldiers and while managing to make sense of this period of the war that the Soldiers were living,scarifying,fighting and dying in while the rest of America was at the mall,then this book is for you.
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