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25 Books to Read Before You Die: 21st Century
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Shop nowWar Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
Narrator
Chris Hedges
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Length
6 hours 27 minutes
Language
English
As a veteran war correspondent, Chris Hedges has survived ambushes in Central America, imprisonment in Sudan, and a beating by Saudi military police. He has seen children murdered for sport in Gaza and petty thugs elevated into war heroes in the Balkans. Hedges, who is also a former divinity student, has seen war at its worst and knows too well that to those who pass through it, war can be exhilarating and even addictive. "It gives us purpose, meaning, a reason for living."
Drawing on his own experience and on the literature of combat from Homer to Michael Herr, Hedges shows how war seduces not just those on the front lines but entire societies, corrupting politics, destroying culture, and perverting basic human desires. Mixing hard-nosed realism with profound moral and philosophical insight, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is a work of terrible power and redemptive clarity whose truths have never been more necessary.
Chris Hedges was a war correspondent for two decades in Central America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans, fifteen of them with the New York Times, where he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He is the author of fourteen books, including War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and his latest, Our Class: Trauma and Transformation in an American Prison. The passages in this book are taken from his writings on war, primarily from Truthdig and ScheerPost, over the past twenty years, as well as from numerous talks and lectures. He writes a column every Monday for ScheerPost and has a show, The Chris Hedges Report, on The Real News. He holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard University and has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and The University of Toronto. He has taught students earning their college degree from Rutgers University in the New Jersey prison system since 2010.
Chris Hedges, a staff member of the New York Times since 1990, has been a foreign correspondent for fifteen years. An adjunct professor of journalism at New York University, he is the author of Losing Moses on the Freeway and What Every Person Should Know About War. Chris was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the New York Times's coverage of global terrorism. A senior fellow at the Nation Institute, he lives in New Jersey.