Gallagher - who has been a contributor to the “At War” blog for The New York Times - writes here with the same verve and humor that made “Kaboom” such an engaging read, but the story he tells in “Youngblood” is a tragic one. But “Youngblood” is a novel, written with more distance and perspective on the war than “Kaboom.” It possesses the retrospective knowledge of what happened in Iraq, as the hopeful days of the surge gave way to growing doubts about the war, and, as we know now, to the rise of ISIS after the full withdrawal of American troops in 2011. Gallagher also provides a visceral sense of what young American soldiers experienced during their Iraq deployments - the camaraderie, the fear, the exhaustion and boredom, and the sheer discomfort of being encased in 60 pounds of body armor, like a turtle, in triple-digit heat while keeping an eye out for snipers and roadside bombs. By turns thoughtful and irreverent and darkly funny, that book possessed an electric immediacy - a you-are-there sense of what it was like to be a grunt in the hot desert sands outside Baghdad, hunting for I.E.D.’s and bomb factories, negotiating with local sheikhs and frightened civilians, and grappling with the absurdities of military bureaucracy. Matt Gallagher’s 2010 memoir, “Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War,” grew out of a popular blog he wrote while stationed in Iraq for 15 months, beginning in 2007.
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