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Don't miss this week's New York Times Book Review for a fierce and moving review of The Photographer by Mideast expert Chris Hedges.

"How do you explain that the very proposition of war as an instrument of virtue is absurd?  How do you cope with memories of children bleeding to death with bits of iron fragments peppered throughout their small bodies?  How do you speak of war without tears?

"The power of “The Photographer” is that it bridges this silence.  There is no fighting in this book.  No great warriors are exalted.  The story is about those who live on the fringes of war and care for its human detritus.  By the end of the book the image or picture of a weapon is distasteful.  And if you can achieve this, you have gone a long way to imparting the truth about warfare."

Photographer-booksellerpage

And for more from Hedges on the topic, he's written a remarkable essay about the current war in Afghanistan, where he talks at length with Juliette Fournot, who headed the Doctors Without Borders mission depicted in The Photographer:

"The U.S. fuels the bonfires of war. The
more troops we send to Afghanistan, the more drones we send on bombing
runs over Pakistan, the more airstrikes we carry out, the worse the
unraveling will become. We have killed twice as many civilians as the
Taliban this year and that number is sure to rise in the coming months.

“I
find this term ‘collateral damage’ dehumanizing,” Dr. Fournot said, “as
if it is a necessity. People are sacrificed on the altar of an idea.
Air power is blind.  I know this from having been caught in numerous
bombings.”