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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
4.5 stars. I really enjoyed reading this book. The premise was particularly intriguing, and I loved the perspective from which it was told. A very relevant story for current times.
adventurous
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
the writing is great. The story is not... It is typical... almost old. I hate to be so harsh but I found the premise to be unoriginal.
I read this book every day watching the news.
I read this book every day watching the news.
In a world where climate change has eaten away the U.S. coastlines, several southern states have once again seceded from the Union and the country is involved in the Second Civil War. It's a story of savage brutality, survival and revenge set in the heart of the war-torn south.
A surprising Dystopia by Omar El Akkad, presenting a view of the US over 50 years from now that is in the midst of its second Civil War. El Akkad does an incredible job of using anxieties of the contemporary world, and projecting them to their worst possible conclusion in the future. The book is well written and has sufficient intensity to warrant inclusion among Sinclair Lewis' 'It Can't Happen Here' and Philip Roth's 'The Plot Against America' - except perhaps the violence of El Akkad's world is at a completely different level.
"This isn't a story about war. It's about ruin." Quoted from 'American War,' page six.
'American War' is a distressing story. It is set in the South of the United States. Gentle reader, I am not speaking of the South in 2017. I am speaking of an angry South in 2074, which fights a pyrrhic civil war against 'the Blues' who live in the North United States. The South goes to war over the right to separate from the United States because of a new law forbidding the use of fossil fuels. There also exists a general hatred of northern 'Blue' values.
'American War' is a fictional biography of the creation of a terrorist, Sara T. Chestnutt. This biography is about how she became radicalized as told by a descendant, her nephew Benjamin Chestnutt. Benjamin is supposedly now a historian living in New Anchorage. From her diaries, interviews and and his personal memories, Benjamin knits together Sara's innocent childhood growing up with her brother and sister in swampy Louisiana until the age of six. Then the deaths of close family members after they became refugees living in a camp for almost a decade after America's Second Civil War begins (not seemingly too far-fetched of an idea right now), and Sara's imprisonment with torture after being accused of being a terrorist, finally make her eager to accept being recruited as a real terrorist.
There are plot assumptions in Omar El Akkad's novel which felt satirical to me, but overall, this was a darkly powerful and seemingly psychologically accurate story! Gentle reader, there is not a single moment of hope in this American dystopian future, convincingly extrapolated from current events. I suspect many readers will be very very upset for a variety of reasons on finishing this novel - if they can finish it.
The USA, and particularly the South, has been devastated by global warming in this novel. Florida is entirely underwater. Parts of the USA from Texas to California are succumbing to Mexico's control. The United States is cracking apart administratively into regions separated by historical culture.
The rebel Reds (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and mostly underwater Louisiana - collectively called 'The Free Southern State', whose Capitol is Atlanta, Georgia) are trying to win separation from the better-resourced 'Blues' Union. The ‘Blues’ Capitol is now Columbus, Ohio because of horrendous storms on the east coast.
The Reds are barely sustaining themselves. The economy in Red territory is mostly destroyed, and people are living primarily by sustenance hunting and trading in the rural areas. The remnants of civilization are still everywhere and somewhat functioning, but much of southern culture and infrastructure is laying about in a state of rot and decrepitude. People in The Free Southern State seethe with resentment and fury at their deepening impoverishment by what they see as the unfair interference and high-handed laws passed by the Blues.
Sporadic skirmishes and incidental terrorism between the Blues (northern USA) and the Reds (southern USA) soon flower into a full-blown civil war. The war officially takes off after a southerner assassinates the American President in 2073 and 'The Free Southern State' declares its independence. The Blues eventually use drones to bomb southern locations, killing non-combatants and refugees, including those who had run to camps for safety. Military battles are fought. Children grow up in refugee camps, living behind barbed wire for the majority of the hot war and then long after when the major battles subside again into ongoing skirmishes and terrorism. The war lasts from 2074 to 2095. Chemical and biological weapons further add to the chaos and pain.
I thought some of this story was darkly amusing after I finished it, even as I felt very upset, too. This was an extremely hard book for me to finish, ultimately.
In the real world, the Al-Qaeda terrorism against America and the resulting reactive war of America against Al-Qaeda and the originally uninvolved Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan (and the peculiar but horrible punitive invasion of Iraq maybe just because it was on the way to Afghanistan, or maybe to punish again the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait or maybe because we wanted their oil industry, or maybe because there really had been erroneous intelligence of what kind of weapons Saddam was preparing to use, i.e. biological or chemical weapons) has become a long tail of death, starvation, torture, terrorism, suicide bombers, vengeance, opportunistic theft of resources and sadism. Civilians are being ground up like hamburger by the forces of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism. Fundamentalist Islam is an unleashed genocide which is sweeping across the world.
Terrorists have never behaved according to Western gentlemen’s rules about warfare (no killing of innocents, women or children). State governments throw out most of the rules as well in the overheated thrill of killing. Shockingly to many common people around the world, the United States also abandons its stance of humane war exceptionalism when feeling the demon whip of revenge. It has decided in recent battles to fight terrorists the same way terrorists are fighting us whether civilians were present or not. The more sophisticated nations, of course, never doubted that the United States would fight a war like a junkyard dog the same as everyone else. They enjoy trumpeting the USA's failure to kill any more selectively than anyone else.
But this book is not really only about exposing the moral hypocrisies of countries or terrorists in fighting wars. Yes, the author placed a hypothetical civil war between regions of Americans who currently are experiencing an open outbreak of culture and class hatreds to highlight Americans might prosecute a war amongst ourselves just as harsh or immoral or stupid as we have overseas. The novel shows all of the accompanying self-destruction we would cause to fellow Americans in a civil war similar to the ongoing civil war between Muslims. I get it. Americans are not magically immune.
Plus, sidebar, global warming WILL flood the South and the coasts.
But I think the author's primary purpose in writing this novel was to demonstrate how a terrorist is created.
Now, a dull educational message from your sponsor about the basis for modern Warfare Laws and the Morality of sanctioned killing:
Everyone knows the laws, religions and philosophies of Ancient Rome truly are the progenitor to much of the development of Western Civilization and a lot of the civilization of western Asia. One of the developments which made Rome a Great Civilization, arguably, was its legal system. Rome copied Greek/Hellenistic originals in many things - Art, Religion, Law, Philosophy - but the Romans outdid the Greeks in refining the philosophy and theory of Law. They particularly spread their legal system through the forcing of their laws on other cultures, and codifying laws, including those of warfare, in writing. Echoes of Roman law are embedded in the laws and culture of the United States, particularly the concepts of Natural Law
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law)
The philosophy of Natural Law presupposes that there exists Universal rational precepts regarding the punishment of malefactors who commit violent assaults on the innocent, the taking of property of others with appropriate compensation, and proscribing fraudulent and deceptive practices. Natural Law assumes these ideas are intuitive and innate precepts of equity, like a baby instinctively suckling.
A moral legal system should settle disputes without violence within supportive governing institutions. It lets people know their rights, duties, and moral obligations in a predictable environment complementary to Humanity's natural desires for justice and fairness. It promotes the teaching of rational legal philosophies to a citizenry already primed by the possession of a Universal Human Nature to keep to codified rules of law which are innate to rational human beings.
The ancient Romans believed equity and fairness are naturally rational to all human beings, in all cultures. Ancient Romans traveled widely; and everywhere they went (and conquered), all nations, communities and peoples all seemingly possessed variations of these above-mentioned laws to regulate Humanity in living together peaceably. Human nature itself seemed to require and express an essentially innate need for equity in relationships.
Robbing and indiscriminate killing is an inexcusable ignorance of innate Natural law. In Roman philosophy and culture, such behaviors could only be produced by defective human beings who cannot recognize Natural Law.
To Ancient Romans, the Visigoths, Vandals, and Ostrogoths were barbarians because they did not recognize Natural equity and fairness. To ancient Romans, these Europeans were very defective, maybe not human.
The United States embraced the ancient Romans ideas about innate moral laws, filtered through the writings of John Locke and Christian theologists. Our educational system has imposed these ideas in some form on every person who goes through our schools. We are taught to embrace these supposed Natural Laws by the codification of them in our Constitution. Our Constitution is supposedly what makes America an Exceptional country. Of course, anyone who can read can see for themselves the Constitution originally assumed these ancient Roman Natural Laws are innate only in White educated Christian men of property.
We do seem to have firmly absorbed the ideas of ancient Roman legal philosophy that if a person or peoples do not show any responses recognizable by White American men that demonstrate these innate Natural Laws, they must be barbarians, not human, insane, not rational, incapable of fundamental premises of justice.
Somehow, our education systems have failed to include another of the ancient Roman ideas: all peoples have ultimately a shared psychology, a shared spirituality, a common humanity. As Romans traveled or conquered, they noticed the social commonalities of very different cultures. They incorporated the cultures of others into Roman life if it improved things. As conquering rulers, Romans permitted the conquered to run their daily lives as usual and keep their religions as long as nothing challenged Roman authority or collecting of taxes.
Am I being coherent, gentle readers? I am feeling not much like an Ancient Roman, or a modern American but more like an embittered Neanderthal relic who hoped more Good would be forthcoming from my descendants.
'American War' is a distressing story. It is set in the South of the United States. Gentle reader, I am not speaking of the South in 2017. I am speaking of an angry South in 2074, which fights a pyrrhic civil war against 'the Blues' who live in the North United States. The South goes to war over the right to separate from the United States because of a new law forbidding the use of fossil fuels. There also exists a general hatred of northern 'Blue' values.
'American War' is a fictional biography of the creation of a terrorist, Sara T. Chestnutt. This biography is about how she became radicalized as told by a descendant, her nephew Benjamin Chestnutt. Benjamin is supposedly now a historian living in New Anchorage. From her diaries, interviews and and his personal memories, Benjamin knits together Sara's innocent childhood growing up with her brother and sister in swampy Louisiana until the age of six. Then the deaths of close family members after they became refugees living in a camp for almost a decade after America's Second Civil War begins (not seemingly too far-fetched of an idea right now), and Sara's imprisonment with torture after being accused of being a terrorist, finally make her eager to accept being recruited as a real terrorist.
There are plot assumptions in Omar El Akkad's novel which felt satirical to me, but overall, this was a darkly powerful and seemingly psychologically accurate story! Gentle reader, there is not a single moment of hope in this American dystopian future, convincingly extrapolated from current events. I suspect many readers will be very very upset for a variety of reasons on finishing this novel - if they can finish it.
The USA, and particularly the South, has been devastated by global warming in this novel. Florida is entirely underwater. Parts of the USA from Texas to California are succumbing to Mexico's control. The United States is cracking apart administratively into regions separated by historical culture.
The rebel Reds (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and mostly underwater Louisiana - collectively called 'The Free Southern State', whose Capitol is Atlanta, Georgia) are trying to win separation from the better-resourced 'Blues' Union. The ‘Blues’ Capitol is now Columbus, Ohio because of horrendous storms on the east coast.
The Reds are barely sustaining themselves. The economy in Red territory is mostly destroyed, and people are living primarily by sustenance hunting and trading in the rural areas. The remnants of civilization are still everywhere and somewhat functioning, but much of southern culture and infrastructure is laying about in a state of rot and decrepitude. People in The Free Southern State seethe with resentment and fury at their deepening impoverishment by what they see as the unfair interference and high-handed laws passed by the Blues.
Sporadic skirmishes and incidental terrorism between the Blues (northern USA) and the Reds (southern USA) soon flower into a full-blown civil war. The war officially takes off after a southerner assassinates the American President in 2073 and 'The Free Southern State' declares its independence. The Blues eventually use drones to bomb southern locations, killing non-combatants and refugees, including those who had run to camps for safety. Military battles are fought. Children grow up in refugee camps, living behind barbed wire for the majority of the hot war and then long after when the major battles subside again into ongoing skirmishes and terrorism. The war lasts from 2074 to 2095. Chemical and biological weapons further add to the chaos and pain.
I thought some of this story was darkly amusing after I finished it, even as I felt very upset, too. This was an extremely hard book for me to finish, ultimately.
In the real world, the Al-Qaeda terrorism against America and the resulting reactive war of America against Al-Qaeda and the originally uninvolved Taliban terrorists in Afghanistan (and the peculiar but horrible punitive invasion of Iraq maybe just because it was on the way to Afghanistan, or maybe to punish again the Ba'athist government of Saddam Hussein for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait or maybe because we wanted their oil industry, or maybe because there really had been erroneous intelligence of what kind of weapons Saddam was preparing to use, i.e. biological or chemical weapons) has become a long tail of death, starvation, torture, terrorism, suicide bombers, vengeance, opportunistic theft of resources and sadism. Civilians are being ground up like hamburger by the forces of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism. Fundamentalist Islam is an unleashed genocide which is sweeping across the world.
Terrorists have never behaved according to Western gentlemen’s rules about warfare (no killing of innocents, women or children). State governments throw out most of the rules as well in the overheated thrill of killing. Shockingly to many common people around the world, the United States also abandons its stance of humane war exceptionalism when feeling the demon whip of revenge. It has decided in recent battles to fight terrorists the same way terrorists are fighting us whether civilians were present or not. The more sophisticated nations, of course, never doubted that the United States would fight a war like a junkyard dog the same as everyone else. They enjoy trumpeting the USA's failure to kill any more selectively than anyone else.
But this book is not really only about exposing the moral hypocrisies of countries or terrorists in fighting wars. Yes, the author placed a hypothetical civil war between regions of Americans who currently are experiencing an open outbreak of culture and class hatreds to highlight Americans might prosecute a war amongst ourselves just as harsh or immoral or stupid as we have overseas. The novel shows all of the accompanying self-destruction we would cause to fellow Americans in a civil war similar to the ongoing civil war between Muslims. I get it. Americans are not magically immune.
Plus, sidebar, global warming WILL flood the South and the coasts.
But I think the author's primary purpose in writing this novel was to demonstrate how a terrorist is created.
Now, a dull educational message from your sponsor about the basis for modern Warfare Laws and the Morality of sanctioned killing:
Everyone knows the laws, religions and philosophies of Ancient Rome truly are the progenitor to much of the development of Western Civilization and a lot of the civilization of western Asia. One of the developments which made Rome a Great Civilization, arguably, was its legal system. Rome copied Greek/Hellenistic originals in many things - Art, Religion, Law, Philosophy - but the Romans outdid the Greeks in refining the philosophy and theory of Law. They particularly spread their legal system through the forcing of their laws on other cultures, and codifying laws, including those of warfare, in writing. Echoes of Roman law are embedded in the laws and culture of the United States, particularly the concepts of Natural Law
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law)
The philosophy of Natural Law presupposes that there exists Universal rational precepts regarding the punishment of malefactors who commit violent assaults on the innocent, the taking of property of others with appropriate compensation, and proscribing fraudulent and deceptive practices. Natural Law assumes these ideas are intuitive and innate precepts of equity, like a baby instinctively suckling.
A moral legal system should settle disputes without violence within supportive governing institutions. It lets people know their rights, duties, and moral obligations in a predictable environment complementary to Humanity's natural desires for justice and fairness. It promotes the teaching of rational legal philosophies to a citizenry already primed by the possession of a Universal Human Nature to keep to codified rules of law which are innate to rational human beings.
The ancient Romans believed equity and fairness are naturally rational to all human beings, in all cultures. Ancient Romans traveled widely; and everywhere they went (and conquered), all nations, communities and peoples all seemingly possessed variations of these above-mentioned laws to regulate Humanity in living together peaceably. Human nature itself seemed to require and express an essentially innate need for equity in relationships.
Robbing and indiscriminate killing is an inexcusable ignorance of innate Natural law. In Roman philosophy and culture, such behaviors could only be produced by defective human beings who cannot recognize Natural Law.
To Ancient Romans, the Visigoths, Vandals, and Ostrogoths were barbarians because they did not recognize Natural equity and fairness. To ancient Romans, these Europeans were very defective, maybe not human.
The United States embraced the ancient Romans ideas about innate moral laws, filtered through the writings of John Locke and Christian theologists. Our educational system has imposed these ideas in some form on every person who goes through our schools. We are taught to embrace these supposed Natural Laws by the codification of them in our Constitution. Our Constitution is supposedly what makes America an Exceptional country. Of course, anyone who can read can see for themselves the Constitution originally assumed these ancient Roman Natural Laws are innate only in White educated Christian men of property.
We do seem to have firmly absorbed the ideas of ancient Roman legal philosophy that if a person or peoples do not show any responses recognizable by White American men that demonstrate these innate Natural Laws, they must be barbarians, not human, insane, not rational, incapable of fundamental premises of justice.
Somehow, our education systems have failed to include another of the ancient Roman ideas: all peoples have ultimately a shared psychology, a shared spirituality, a common humanity. As Romans traveled or conquered, they noticed the social commonalities of very different cultures. They incorporated the cultures of others into Roman life if it improved things. As conquering rulers, Romans permitted the conquered to run their daily lives as usual and keep their religions as long as nothing challenged Roman authority or collecting of taxes.
Am I being coherent, gentle readers? I am feeling not much like an Ancient Roman, or a modern American but more like an embittered Neanderthal relic who hoped more Good would be forthcoming from my descendants.
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5 stars that I rounded up because the ending was so satisfying. Full of great themes and characters that twist and turn oocn a stage set all so well in a world disturbingly plausible. If you're looking for typical dystopian plot-driven action about a future war, this is not for you.