Best non-fiction book on international affairs
AWARD YEAR: 2008
AWARD NAME: The Cornelius Ryan Award 2008
RECIPIENT: Dexter Filkins
AFFILIATION: Alfred A. Knopf
HONORED WORK: “The Forever War”
In his narrative of the Iraq War, Dexter Filkins lives up to his reputation as the best war correspondent of his generation. His vivid portraits of the arc of violence and death that spreads from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Iraq and even the tip of Manhattan capture the fear and the feel of a global conflagration. It’s a war fought by brave, confused young recruits from the hinterland of America, a war that engulfs men, women and children, a war fought in shattered alleyways, ruined villages, and flattened mosques. Filkins, showing extraordinary bravery, risks his life time and again to get the story — of a public execution by the Taliban in Kabul, of a Marine colonel pushed to the brink, of the soldier who took a bullet for him. This is one of the greatest books to come out of a terrible war.
Citation for Excellence:
E. Benjamin Skinner
Free Press
“A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery”