Seduced by war
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
By Chris Hedges. Public Affairs, 211 pp., $23.00; paperback, $12.95.
Chris Hedges's penetrating insights into war are as current as the daily headlines. The images of the war in Iraq and the proclamations of political, military and religious leaders vividly etched in our minds make Hedges's analyses all the more compelling.
Hedges knows the Middle East well, having served both as the Jerusalem bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News in the 1980s and as a correspondent for the New York Times during the 1991 gulf war. This book draws heavily on the knowledge and experience he gleaned from years of firsthand experience in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Cyprus, Algeria, Iran and Iraq. But the Middle East provides only part of the backdrop against which he writes. His 20 years as a war correspondent also have taken him to the Falkland Islands, El Salvador, the former Yugoslavia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and northern India.
The book's richness and depth are enhanced by Hedges's theological and literary sophistication. The son of a parish minister, Hedges has a degree in English literature, an M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School and a devotion to classical literature. Regular readers of the New York Times already know that he is a very gifted writer.
