More and more, the SD header becomes a misnomer… these clearly aren’t books I’ve read in the last seven days – seven weeks wouldn’t even cover it – but they are books worth praising.
Generation Kill by Evan Wright
The last non-fiction book I had read before this was David Simon’s “Homicide – A Year On The Killing Streets”, and prior to that, you have to go a few years before you get Michael J Fox’s biography “Lucky Man” – yes, yes, I have incredible taste.
The truth is, I wouldn’t have even heard of Evan Wright or “Generation Kill” if it hadn’t been for Simon’s own TV adaptation of this exceptional book.
Wright’s beautifully nuanced piece of war reporting describes the invasion of Iraq through the eyes of First Recon, who were among the first US soldiers to make their way across the confused social and physical geography of the country to take Baghdad in the early weeks of the war. Wright was an embedded reporter for Rolling Stone with the First Recon, and through a rigid journalistic approach to his experiences, he paints a picture of highly competent young men placed in the most extreme of circumstances, at the mercy of the sort of bureaucracy and leadership uncertainty that most of us face in our own much less life-or-death careers.
Also, is something excitable happening in my absence, with Mr Herring? Will research! 
Not past it yet, I suspect… 
Will DM you with stuff about tomorrow…