Matt Gallagher is a Wake Forest graduate and US Army veteran. He's the author of the novels
Youngblood and the memoir
Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War. He holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia and has written for
The New York Times,
The Atlantic,
Esquire,
and
The Paris Review. He lives with his wife and son in Brooklyn.
--This text refers to the
paperback edition.
"A timely and moving story of the realities and psychological consequences of war."-- "Harper's Bazaar"
Youngblood airlifts readers into the Iraq War, and through Matt Gallagher's eyes we find the place unsettlingly intimate, sublimely corporeal, ribald and gripping. With the promise of withdrawal shimmering on the horizon, Gallagher's LT Jack is a mesmerizing narrator, the Charles Marlow of Iraq, urging our vessel deeper into a land of secrets and veils, deeper into the anarchic and ambivalent psyches of the men both occupying and being occupied. This muscular novel cements Gallagher's role as our essential biographer of the forever war.--Claire Vaye Watkins, award-winning author of Gold Fame Citrus "Oregonian Review"
Youngblood is not only a 'war novel, ' it is a rich, fully formed, and beautifully executed novel-novel, way beyond the chicken coops of genre, a novel about the human heart in contest with itself, a novel about memory and longing and grief and hope and guilt and late-night ironies that raise a chuckle to the lips of the dead. Yes, the people and events in this fine novel are certainly 'tangled up' with war, as the author puts it on page one, but it is the same sort of entanglement that Lord Jim has with the ocean, or the sort of entanglement that Huck Finn has with the river.--Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried "Oregonian Review"
"'iCasualties', 'electricity recons', and 'Mesopotamian Cadillacs';'finding out on Facebook that your fiance's dead. Gallagher humanizes these--war's--alien and extraordinary elements. Youngblood is a beautiful book. It will break your heart."--Lea Carpenter, critically-acclaimed author of Eleven Days "Oregonian Review"
"A complex tale about the Iraq War, intrigue, love, and survival. Gallagher follows up on his successful first book, the memoir Kaboom: Embracing the Suck in a Savage Little War (2010), with a smart Iraq War novel that adds something new to the genre--new genres. Gallagher subtly weaves throughout this excellent, brutal tale intrigue, a mystery, and two compelling love stories... A fresh twist on the Iraq War novel adds depth to this burgeoning genre."-- "Kirkus, starred review"
"A gripping, compelling novel about war and country by an exceedingly talented veteran of Iraq who writes with a soldier's eye and a poet's soul. Youngblood is a captivating story of hope and loss, love and ruin that transports readers to the war as it was felt and lived - by Americans and Iraqis alike. It clearly deserves a place on the top shelf of American war literature." --General (Ret.) David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq (2003-2004), Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq (2004-2005), Multinational Force-Iraq (2007-2008), and U.S. Central Command (2008-2010) "Oregonian Review"
"Smart and riveting."-- "Vogue"
"The despair of the Iraqis and the dead-pan wit of the boys who wear the lightning bolt. The spikes of adrenaline in the firefights. The brutal exchange rate of blood and blood money. The tyranny of the sun. Gallagher nails them all, with a voice that is both confident and illuminating."-- "Oregonian Review"
"Thrilling, tragic, and darkly funny, Matt Gallagher's Youngblood is a brilliant portrait of command in the modern, morally bruising battlefield."--Phil Klay, New York Times bestselling author of Redeployment "Oregonian Review"
[Gallagher] writes about war like you've never read before ... in its emotional nuance, Youngblood codifies the fact that this is a voice to be reckoned with. -- "Esquire"
--This text refers to the
paperback edition.