"A precisely crafted and bracingly honest" memoir of war and its aftershocks from the New York Times-bestselling author of Matterhorn (The Atlantic).




In 1968, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. In his thirteen-month tour he saw intense combat, killing the enemy and watching friends die. Marlantes survived, but like many of his brothers in arms, he has spent the last forty years dealing with his experiences.





In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes takes a candid look at these experiences and critically examines how we might better prepare young soldiers for war. In the past, warriors were prepared for battle by ritual, religion, and literature -- which also helped bring them home. While contemplating ancient works from Homer to the Mahabharata, Marlantes writes of the daily contradictions modern warriors are subject to, of being haunted by the face of a young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters, and of how he finally found a way to make peace with his past. Through it all, he demonstrates just how poorly prepared our nineteen-year-old warriors are for the psychological and spiritual aspects of the journey.





In this memoir, the New York Times-bestselling author of Matterhorn offers "a well-crafted and forcefully argued work that contains fresh and important insights into what it's like to be in a war and what it does to the human psyche" (The Washington Post).

• We started tracking this book on August 30, 2011.
• This book was $9.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 315 times in the past 5,120 days.
• The current price of this book is $9.99 last checked one day ago.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $2.99.
• The lowest price to date was $1.20 last reached on September 30, 2020.
• This book has been $1.20 2 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $12.35 last reached on August 30, 2025.
• This book has been $12.35 one time since we started tracking it.

• Biographies & MemoirsHistoricalMilitary & WarsBranchesMarines
• Biographies & MemoirsProfessionals & AcademicsMilitary & Spies
• HistoryMilitaryVietnam War

• Publication Date: November 20, 2018
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 273 Pages
• File Size: 34 KB