David Finkel
Best non-fiction book on international affairs
AWARD DATE: 2009
AWARD NAME: The Cornelius Ryan Award 2009
AWARD RECIPIENT: David Finkel
AWARD RECIPIENT AFFILIATION: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
AWARD HONORED WORK: “The Good Soldiers”
In the classic combat reporting tradition of Ernie Pyle, Michael Herr and Dexter Filkins, Pulitzer Prize winner David Finkel has written a harrowing account of one U.S. Army battalion’s experience of the surge, that desperate last-minute effort to win the war in Iraq.
The Washington Post’s Finkel spent eight months with the 800 men and women of the 2-16, as the battalion was called. He went on patrols, ate in the mess, met General Petraeus, entered the houses of terrified civilians, and saw up front the handiwork of war – men cut in half, soldiers medicated to the max so they could continue the mission, Iraqi infants wounded beyond repair. What comes through is the courage and decency of American troops, the strength of the Iraqi people, and a deep abiding sense of sorrow and loss.
Citation for Excellence:
Patrick Radden Keefe
Doubleday
“The Snakehead”