Author | Matt Gallagher |
---|---|
Cover artist | Alex Camlin |
Language | English |
Series | Iraq War |
Subject | Military |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Publisher | Da Capo Press |
Publication date | March 23, 2010 |
Publication place | United States |
Pages | 310 |
ISBN | 978-0-306-81967-4 |
OCLC | 706029541 |
956.704434092 | |
LC Class | DS79.76 .G343 2010 |
Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal was a popular military blog from November 2007 to June 2008, before it was shut down by the writer's military chain of command. [1] The author of the online journal, who went by the pseudonym of LT G, wrote about the front-line experiences in the Iraq War as a United States Army soldier. [2] A scout platoon leader, LT G often incorporated the trials and tribulations of his platoon in his writings, offering a brash and brutally honest perspective of modern warfare. [3] [4] Kaboom was shut down, and subsequently deleted, after LT G made a post detailing his turning down of a promotion in an effort to stay with his soldiers. [1]
Before Kaboom was shut down, it was one of the few military blogs to garner attention and press coverage from the print media. [5] This can be attributed to LT G's literary writing style. [6] In a nationally published story chronicling the rise and fall of Kaboom, LT G was revealed to be Matt Gallagher, a young Army officer who had been promoted to captain soon after his blog was shut down. [7]
In May 2009, Da Capo Press announced they had signed Gallagher to a book deal. [8] [9] The book, entitled Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War, was published on April 1, 2010. [10] A war memoir that blends traditional memoir and creative nonfiction techniques, Kaboom chronicles Gallagher's fifteen-month deployment with 2-14 Cavalry and 1-27 Infantry during the Surge. [11]
It received widespread critical acclaim. Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times praised Gallagher for "his love of language, acquired as an avid reader, and his elastic voice as a writer - his ability to move effortlessly between the earnest and the irreverent, the thoughtful and the comic." [12]
In The Wall Street Journal, Bing West wrote that "Understanding that comedy best captures the irony of the human condition, Mr. Gallagher pokes fun at himself, his soldiers and those above him ... Without a trace of sentimentality, Mr. Gallagher draws the reader into the everyday complexities of leading soldiers from every strata of American society ... Mr. Gallagher is too modest, and too ironic, to tout his own accomplishments, so I'll do it for him: He is a classic representative of the U.S. military, a force that imposed its will, both physical and moral, to shatter al Qaeda." [13]
Noted Middle Eastern scholar and author Andrew Exum wrote that Kaboom "may well be the best memoir to have been written about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ... Kaboom is laugh-out loud funny. And brutal." [14] Patrick Hennessey, author of The Junior Officers' Reading Club, wrote in The Financial Times that Kaboom is "Surely the Jarhead of the second Gulf war." [15]
Tim O'Brien is an American novelist who served as a soldier in the Vietnam War. Much of his writing is about wartime Vietnam, and his work later in life often explores the postwar lives of its veterans.
A milblog or warblog is a blog devoted mostly or wholly to covering news events concerning an ongoing war. Sometimes the use of the term "warblog" implies that the blog concerned has a pro-war slant. The term "milblog" implies that the author is a member of, or has some connection to the military; the more specific term "soldierblog" is sometimes used for the former.
The Second Battle of Fallujah, initially codenamed Operation Phantom Fury, Operation al-Fajr was an American-led offensive of the Iraq War that lasted roughly six weeks, starting 7 November 2004. Marking the highest point of the conflict against the Iraqi insurgency, it was a joint military effort carried out by the United States, the Iraqi Interim Government, and the United Kingdom. Within the city of Fallujah, the coalition was led by the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army, the battle was later described as "some of the heaviest urban combat Marines have been involved in since Huế City in Vietnam in 1968" and as the toughest battle the U.S. military has been in since the end of the Vietnam War. It was the single bloodiest and fiercest battle of the entire conflict, including for American troops.
Michiko Kakutani is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
Francis J. "Bing" West Jr. is an American author, Marine combat veteran and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Reagan Administration.
Jarhead is a 2003 Gulf War memoir by author and former U.S. Marine Anthony Swofford. After leaving military service, the author went on to college and earned a double master's degree in Fine Arts at the University of Iowa.
Larry Curtis Heinemann was an American novelist born and raised in Chicago. His published work – three novels and a memoir – is primarily concerned with the Vietnam War.
Kaboom is an onomatopoeic term representing the sound of an explosion. It may also refer to:
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Andrew Exum is an American scholar of the Middle East, a former U.S. Army officer. He was a part of General Stanley McChrystal's review of the American strategy in Afghanistan.
David Gregory Bellavia is a former United States Army soldier who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Second Battle of Fallujah. Bellavia has also received the Bronze Star Medal, two Army Commendation Medals, two Army Achievement Medals, and the New York State Conspicuous Service Cross. In 2005, Bellavia was inducted into the New York Veterans' Hall of Fame. He has subsequently been involved with politics in Western New York State. Upon being awarded the Medal of Honor on June 25, 2019, Bellavia became the first, and currently only living recipient of the Medal of Honor for service during the Iraq War.
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Donald Mitchell Brown, Jr. is an American author, attorney, and former United States Navy JAG Officer. He has published fifteen books on the United States military, including eleven military-genre novels, the best known of which is Treason (2005) in which radical Islamic clerics infiltrate the United States Navy Chaplain Corps. He has published four works of military nonfiction, including his national bestseller, The Last Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Final Combat Mission of World War II (2017). Brown may be best known for his work as legal counsel to Army Lieutenant Clint Lorance, who had been convicted of murder by a military court-martial at Fort Bragg when his platoon became involved in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2011, and his authorship of the 2019 book Travesty of Justice: The Shocking Prosecution of Lt. Clint Lorance. On November 15, 2019, President Donald Trump pardoned Lorance, and the book is considered to be a factor in leading to that pardon. Between the release of Travesty of Justice on March 31, 2019, and Lorance's pardon on November 15, 2019, Brown made numerous national television appearances and penned a number of national Op-eds urging President Trump to free and exonerate Lieutenant Lorance. On the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, November 27, 2019, Brown and Lorance appeared on Hannity, the nightly national broadcast on the Fox News Channel to discuss the presidential pardon and release.
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Matt Gallagher is an American author, veteran of the Iraq War and war correspondent. Gallagher has written on a variety of subjects, mainly contemporary war fiction and non-fiction. He first became known for his war memoir Kaboom (2010), which tells of his and his scout platoon's experiences during the Iraq War.
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