num_pages: 354
description: 
  Another nameless town, another target for First Recon. It's only five in the afternoon, but a sandtorm has plunged everything into a hellish twilight of murky, red dust. On rooftops, in alleyways lurk militiamen with machine guns, AK rifles and the odd rocket-propelled grenade. Artillery bombardment has shattered the town's sewers and rubble is piled up in lagoons of human excrement. It stinks. Welcome to Iraq...
Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the 23 Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ed combat since Vietnam. They were a new breed of American warrior unrecognizable to their forebears-soldiers raised on hip hop, Internet porn, Marilyn Manson, video games and The Real World, a band of born-again Christians, dopers, Buddhists, and New Agers who gleaned their precepts from kung fu movies and Oprah Winfrey. Cocky, brave, headstrong, wary, and mostly unprepared for the physical, emotional, and moral horrors ahead, the "First Suicide Battalion" would spearhead the blitzkrieg on Iraq, and fight against the hardest resistance Saddam had to offer. Generation Kill is the funny, frightening, and profane firsthand account of these remarkable men, of the personal toll of victory, and of the randomness, brutality, and camaraderie of a new American war.
language: English
title: Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War
titlecomplete: Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War
characters: Meesh, Larry Shawn Patrick, Gabe Garza, Jason Lilley, Evan Stafford, Rudy Reyes, Dave McGraw, Walt Hasser, James Chaffin, Josh Ray Person, Stephen Ferrando, Ray Griego, Todd Eckloff, Brad Colbert, Evan Wright, Leandro Baptista, Antonio Espera, Eric Kocher, Mike Wynn, James Mattis, Nathaniel Fick, John Sixta, Harold James Trombley, Bryan Patterson, Anthony Jacks, Robert Timothy Bryan
genres: Military History, Biography, Contemporary, History, Politics, War, Nonfiction, Journalism, Military Fiction, Memoir
ratings_count: 18209
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Current Interest, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: PEN Center USA Literary Award
category: Research Nonfiction
publisher: Berkley Caliber