The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War
(Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Kevin Sites. (2013). The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War. HarperCollins.

Kevin Sites. 2013. The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War. HarperCollins.

Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War. HarperCollins, 2013.

Kevin Sites. The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War. HarperCollins, 2013.

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Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War

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     Kevin Sites is an award-winning journalist and author. He has worked as a reporter for more than thirty years, half of that covering war and disaster for ABC, NBC, CNN, Yahoo News, and Vice News. He was a 2010 Nieman Journalism Fellow at Harvard University and a 2012 Dart Fellow in Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University. For a decade he lived and taught in Hong Kong as an associate professor of practice in journalism at the University of Hong Kong. He's the author of three books on war, In the Hot Zone, The Things They Cannot Say, and Swimming with Warlords. The Ocean Above Me is his first novel. He lives in Oregon.

   • name: Kevin Sites

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Harper Perennial

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2013-01-29T00:00:00Z

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The Things They Cannot Say

fullDescription

American Legacy Book Awards Winner

"The harrowing accounts detail the experiencesof 11 US soldiers and Marines who have been ravaged by modern warfare and its psychological aftermath. What makes Kevin's reporting unique and essential is that it didn't stop on the battlefield—he followed his subjects home." — Vice

An important look at the unspoken and unknown truths of war and its impact, told through the personal stories of those who have been there.

In The Things They Cannot Say, eleven soldiers and Marines display a courage that transcends battlefield heroics—they share the truth about their wars. For each it means something different: one struggles to recover from a head injury he believes has stolen his ability to love, another attempts to make amends for the killing of an innocent man, while yet another finds respect for the enemy fighter who tried to kill him.

Award-winning journalist and author Kevin Sites asks the difficult questions of these combatants, many of whom he first met while in Afghanistan and Iraq and others he sought out from different wars: What is it like to kill? What is it like to be under fire? How do you know what's right? What can you never forget?

Sites compiles the accounts of soldiers, Marines, their families and friends, and also shares the narrative of his own failures during war (including complicity in a murder) and the redemptive powers of storytelling in arresting a spiraling path of self-destruction.

He learns that war both gives and takes from those most involved in it. Some struggle in disequilibrium, while others find balance, usually with the help of communities who have learned to listen, without judgment, to the real stories of the men and women it has sent to fight its battles.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: Vice
   • content:

     "The harrowing accounts detail the experiencesof 11 US soldiers and Marines who have been ravaged by modern warfare and its psychological aftermath. What makes Kevin's reporting unique and essential is that it didn't stop on the battlefield—he followed his subjects home." — Vice

     "Sites highlights the importance of treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and sharing stories. Most importantly, he forces readers, those average civilians, to look at what war does to people and think about whether it's always worth it." — San Francisco Chronicle

     A vivid set of portrats of modern combatants written in prose taht moves with speed and heat." — Edward Tick, Ph. D., codirector of Soldier's Heart and author of of War and Soul

     "Riveting and emotionally raw...These gripping stories...are evidence of a profound desire to heal." — Publishers Weekly

     "This is tough stuff, as many of the experiences recounted here are graphic, cruel, and bloody, but they offer an intimate look at the costs of war on a personal, elemental level." — Booklist

     "In sensitive, honest prose, the author emphasizes that this is a book about hope. An important book for warriors and the communities that send them to war." — Kirkus Reviews

     A gritty look at postwar distress, including veterans' personal accounts, by a journalist with his own intimate perspective on the subject. — Shelf Awareness (Bruce Jacobs of Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, KS

2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     October 8, 2012
     In this riveting and emotionally raw debut, award-winning journalist Sites profiles 11 soldiers (including members of non-American militaries) to explore what it feels like to kill, “be shot, bombed or burned in combat,” and how one goes on living after the fighting dies down. Sites opens candidly with his own experience, describing how a moment of journalistic indifference in 2004 resulted in the murder of a captured Iraqi insurgent, a tragedy the author dwells on intermittently throughout the book. Drawing from interviews and military records, Sites goes on to tell the stories of veterans of the wars in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan, and, in the case of his own father, WWII. Whether stationed in sultry jungles, urban streets, or rugged mountains, soldiers are asked to endure intense physical and mental traumas, and while common threads weave throughout these stories, each is unique: one describes the horror of witnessing the crucifixion of a deceased North Vietnamese Army officer; another tells of the guilt that accompanies friendly fire. But these gripping stories do not equal “an indictment against hope”; they are evidence of a profound desire to heal. Photos.

3. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     November 1, 2012
     Veterans from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan--including Sites himself as a war correspondent (In the Hot Zone: One Man, One Year, Twenty Wars, 2007)--tell their tales of the struggle to survive on and after the battlefield, in the hopes that such storytelling may be a way "to release warriors from the bonds of their own silence." Lance Cpl. James Sperry writes, "I am only twenty-four and have lived a life I wish on no one." Such is the common thread of despair to be found among these warriors' tales. In combat, they did and saw things no one should endure. They killed--the enemy, civilians, their own troops as a result of friendly fire. They saw friends blown apart, and they were wounded. They grew rabid with anger and a desire to kill. Then they were expected to return to friends, family and community unchanged from these horrors. But this was not possible, as veteran after veteran experienced PTSD. Too often in silence, combat veterans suffered from an inability to reconnect, to love, to be simply normal. Sites includes himself among the lost, as he recounts how his "confused incompetent inaction" led to the murder of Iraqi insurgent Taleb Salem Nidal. Sites thus joined the ranks of those suffering from PTSD--covering guilt, shame and fear in a haze of alcohol and marijuana, numbed by taking "a chef's salad of [prescribed] drugs every day," losing wives and loved ones who could not understand their sullen withdrawal. However, in sensitive, honest prose, the author emphasizes that this is a book about hope. Most of the wounded warriors eventually found their way back, including Sites, and part of the healing process involves telling their stories. The author allows himself and the combat veterans he interviews the space to do so. An important book for warriors and the communities that send them to war.

     COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

4. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 1, 2012
     Sites is an award-winning print and television journalist who has reported on many of the recent military conflicts for several media outlets. He has compiled accounts by 11 soldiers who served in various war fronts, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and even WWII. What emerges from their stories is a grim, often horrifying portrait of the trauma of modern warfare, which, inevitably, leaves scars, seen and unseen, on participants. Of course, for some, there is an adrenalin rush fueled by danger and the constant struggle to survive. More often, these men recount intense fear, physical and mental pain, and gnawing guilt that may never fully dissipate. This is tough stuff, as many of the experiences recounted here are graphic, cruel, and bloody, but they offer an intimate look at the costs of war on a personal, elemental level.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

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American Legacy Book Awards Winner

"The harrowing accounts detail the experiencesof 11 US soldiers and Marines who have been ravaged by modern warfare and its psychological aftermath. What makes Kevin's reporting unique and essential is that it didn't stop on the battlefield—he followed his subjects home." — Vice

An important look at the unspoken and unknown truths of war and its impact, told through the personal stories of those who have been there.

In The Things They Cannot Say, eleven soldiers and Marines display a courage that transcends battlefield heroics—they share the truth about their wars. For each it means something different: one struggles to recover from a head injury he believes has stolen his ability to love, another attempts to make amends for the killing of an innocent man, while yet another finds respect for the enemy fighter who tried to kill him.

Award-winning...

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Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War

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   • description: History / Wars & Conflicts / Iraq War (2003-2011)
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   • description: History / Wars & Conflicts / Afghan War (2001-2021)