{"title":"Phil Klay","description":"Phil Klay is a veteran of the US Marine Corps and the author of Redeployment, which won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction, and Missionaries, which was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2020 by the Wall Street Journal. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, and elsewhere. He currently teaches fiction at Fairfield University, and is a Board member for Arts in the Armed Forces.","products":[{"product_id":"redeployment-national-book-award-winner-paperback","title":"Redeployment: National Book Award Winner - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the National Book Award for Fiction \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eRedeployment\u003c\/i\u003e is hilarious, biting, whipsawing and sad. It's the best thing written so far on what the war did to people's souls.\" --Dexter Filkins, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eSelected as one of the best books of the year by \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTime\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNewsweek\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e, Amazon, and more \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Phil Klay's\u003ci\u003e Redeployment \u003c\/i\u003etakes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In \"Redeployment\", a soldier who has had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people \"who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died.\" In \"After Action Report\", a Lance Corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn't commit, in order that his best friend will be unburdened. A Morturary Affairs Marine tells about his experiences collecting remains--of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers both. A chaplain sees his understanding of Christianity, and his ability to provide solace through religion, tested by the actions of a ferocious Colonel. And in the darkly comic \"Money as a Weapons System\", a young Foreign Service Officer is given the absurd task of helping Iraqis improve their lives by teaching them to play baseball. These stories reveal the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship and violence that make up a soldier's daily life at war, and the isolation, remorse, and despair that can accompany a soldier's homecoming. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003ci\u003eRedeployment\u003c\/i\u003e has become a classic in the tradition of war writing. Across nations and continents, Klay sets in devastating relief the two worlds a soldier inhabits: one of extremes and one of loss. Written with a hard-eyed realism and stunning emotional depth, this work marks Phil Klay as one of the most talented new voices of his generation.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51369157165279,"sku":"9780143126829","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/FJ12eKFLhU9780143126829.webp?v=1789139257"},{"product_id":"missionaries-paperback","title":"Missionaries - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eOne of President Obama's Favorite Books of the Year \u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cb\u003eOne of the \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e Ten Best Books of the Year \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Missionaries\u003c\/i\u003e is a courageous book: It doesn't shy away, as so much fiction does, from the real world.\" --Juan Gabriel Vásquez, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"A sweeping, interconnected novel of ideas in the tradition of Joseph Conrad and Norman Mailer . . . By taking a long view of the 'rational insanity' of global warfare, \u003ci\u003eMissionaries\u003c\/i\u003e brilliantly fills one of the largest gaps in contemporary literature.\" \u003ci\u003e--\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe debut novel from the National Book Award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eRedeployment\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA group of Colombian soldiers prepares to raid a drug lord's safe house on the Venezuelan border. They're watching him with an American-made drone, about to strike using military tactics taught to them by U.S. soldiers who honed their skills to lethal perfection in Iraq. In \u003ci\u003eMissionaries\u003c\/i\u003e, Phil Klay examines the globalization of violence through the interlocking stories of four characters and the conflicts that define their lives. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFor Mason, a U.S. Army Special Forces medic, and Lisette, a foreign correspondent, America's long post-9\/11 wars in the Middle East exerted a terrible draw that neither is able to shake. Where can such a person go next? All roads lead to Colombia, where the US has partnered with local government to keep predatory narco gangs at bay. Mason, now a liaison to the Colombian military, is ready for the good war, and Lisette is more than ready to cover it. Juan Pablo, a Colombian officer, must juggle managing the Americans' presence and navigating a viper's nest of factions bidding for power. Meanwhile, Abel, a lieutenant in a local militia, has lost almost everything in the seemingly endless carnage of his home province, where the lines between drug cartels, militias, and the state are semi-permeable. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDrawing on six years of research in America and Colombia into the effects of the modern way of war on regular people, Klay has written a novel of extraordinary suspense infused with geopolitical sophistication and storytelling instincts that are second to none. \u003ci\u003eMissionaries\u003c\/i\u003e is a window not only into modern war, but into the individual lives that go on long after the drones have left the skies.","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51374116929759,"sku":"9781984880673","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/snA1Yx7CPx9781984880673.webp?v=1789171954"},{"product_id":"uncertain-ground-citizenship-in-an-age-of-endless-invisible-war-paperback","title":"Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the author of \u003ci\u003eRedeployment \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eMissionaries\u003c\/i\u003e, an astonishing fever graph of the effects of twenty years of war in a brutally divided America\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhen Phil Klay left the Marines a decade ago, after serving as an officer in Iraq, he found himself part of the community of veterans who have no choice but to grapple with the meaning of their wartime experiences--for themselves and for the country. American identity has always been bound up in war--from the revolutionary war of our founding, to the civil war that ended slavery, to the two world wars that launched America as a superpower. What did the current wars say about who we are as a country, and how should we respond as citizens? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eUnlike previous eras of war, few other Americans have had to do any real grappling with the endless, invisible wars of the post-9\/11 world at all; in fact, increasingly, few people are even aware they are still going on. It's as if there's a dark star with a strong gravitational force that draws a relatively small number of soldiers and their families into its orbit, while remaining inconspicuous to most other Americans. In the meantime, the consequences of American military action abroad may be out of sight and out of mind, but they are very real indeed. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis chasm between military and civilian in American life, and the moral blind spot it has created, is one of the great themes of \u003ci\u003eUncertain Ground\u003c\/i\u003e, Phil Klay's powerful series of reckonings in essay form over the past ten years with some of our country's thorniest concerns. In the name of what do we ask young Americans to kill, and to die? In the name of what does this country hang together? As we see at every turn in these pages, those two questions have a great deal to do with one another, and how we answer them will go a long way toward deciding where our troubled country goes from here.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51376694460639,"sku":"9780593556412","price":36.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0813\/8958\/4607\/files\/u1wgtnJ6iM9780593556412.webp?v=1789221713"}],"url":"https:\/\/blackandbarhe.com\/collections\/phil-klay.oembed","provider":"Black \u0026 Barhe Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}