The Long Walk

Reviews / Votes

Brian Castner's The Long Walk is an extraordinary memoir. A fearless and uncompromising look at the burden borne by soldiers in our modern age, it is essential reading for anyone interested in the ways that human beings respond to extreme circumstances. I could not recommend it more highly. * Kevin Powers, author of 'The Yellow Birds' * A shocking description of the unseen price of war. It should be required reading. -- John Ingham * Daily Express * A raw, wrenching, blood-soaked chronicle of the human cost of war. Castner's memoir brings to mind Erich Maria Remarque's masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front. * Jon Krakauer, author of 'Where Men Win Glory' * A powerful book about the long cost of combat and the brotherhood of men at arms. Entertaining, occasionally hilarious, and always harrowing. I found myself holding my breath. * Anthony Swofford, author of 'Jarhead' * It may be the most important book written about modern war. * Stephen Phillips, author of 'Proximity' and 'The Recipient's Son' * Elegant [and] superbly written. As you read think of Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. Castner gives us that steady rhythm of one foot in front of the other. Think of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. Here is the reality of the exhausted mind, and of profound thought wandering all Creation. * Larry Heinemann, author of 'Paco's Story' and 'Close Quarters' * Damn, this is a very human book. You need to read The Long Walk. * Thomas E. Ricks, author of 'Fiasco' and 'The Gamble' * Engrossing... the enduring treachery of memory remains the real, unfinished story of "The Long Walk." It takes as much courage for Castner to confront that memory as it does to face an active fuse. -- Elizabeth D. Samet * New York Times * Vivid... Castner's book intersperses stateside scenes of intense military training, off-hours hijinks and marital strife with vivid, often grisly accounts from Iraq's war-ravaged landscape, where his EOD teams disarmed improvised explosive devices, hunted for the bomb makers or cleaned up after their horrific handiwork while dodging gunfire and angry locals. [He writes] bluntly in describing how he has been changed by the war. * Wall Street Journal * Not the typical testosterone-driven account that plagues the war-memoir genre. His straightforward, unself-conscious writing paints an absorbing picture of war in the twenty-first century. * The New Yorker *