num_pages: 368
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: Harold James Trombley, Rudy Reyes, Anthony Jacks, Dave McGraw, Jason Lilley, Evan Stafford, Robert Timothy Bryan, Nathaniel Fick, James Chaffin, Leandro Baptista, Brad Colbert, James Mattis, Meesh, Josh Ray Person, John Sixta, Larry Shawn Patrick, Todd Eckloff, Ray Griego, Walt Hasser, Mike Wynn, Antonio Espera, Stephen Ferrando, Evan Wright, Gabe Garza, Eric Kocher, Bryan Patterson
genres: Biography, War, Politics, Memoir, Nonfiction, Military History, Contemporary, Military Fiction, Journalism, History
ratings_count: 18218
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: Putnam Adult