Ann Marie Buerkle, You Must Read: War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges

 "The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, 

for war is a drug." 

The movie Jarhead opens with this line from War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.


Chris Hedges has been reporting on wars for almost 30 years, first in El Salvador and other war torn countries in Central America during the nineteen eighties. He reported from Sarajevo and Kosovo. For the past two decades he has been reporting on conflicts all over the Middle East and Africa.

He graduated from Colgate University and Harvard DIvinity School. He studied Arabic. He worked with combat soldiers as he wrote War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He has been awarded prizes for his journalism and writing, and for his humanitarian concerns.

I have heard him speak. Never have I heard a more clear voice of conscience, reason and the realities of war in the 21st century.

His biography from Truthdig:

Chris Hedges Chris Hedges, whose column is published Mondays on Truthdig, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Hedges was part of the team of reporters at The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper’s coverage of global terrorism. He also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. The Los Angeles Press Club honored Hedges’ original columns in Truthdig by naming the author the Online Journalist of the Year in 2009, and granted him the Best Online Column award in 2010 for his Truthdig essay “One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists.” Hedges is a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City and has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University. He currently teaches inmates at a correctional facility in New Jersey. Hedges began his career reporting the war in El Salvador. Following six years in Latin America, he took time off to study Arabic and then went to Jerusalem and later Cairo. He spent seven years in the Middle East, most of them as the bureau chief there for The New York Times. He left the Middle East in 1995 for Sarajevo to cover the war in Bosnia and later reported the war in Kosovo. Afterward, he joined the Times’ investigative team and was based in Paris to cover al-Qaida. He left the Times after being issued a formal reprimand for denouncing the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” (2008) and the best-selling “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2008). His book “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Hedges holds a B.A. in English literature from Colgate University and a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, Calif. Hedges speaks Arabic, French and Spanish and knows ancient Greek and Latin. In addition to writing a weekly original column for Truthdig, he has written for Harper’s Magazine, The New Statesman, The New York Review of Books, Adbusters, Granta, Foreign Affairs and other publications.

About the book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us_Meaning

About Chris Hedges' work (on the Truthdig site):
http://www.truthdig.com/chris_hedges#

Wikipedia biography of Chris Hedges:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges