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Un-American
- A Soldier's Reckoning of Our Longest War
- Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
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Summary
A manifesto about America’s unchallenged war machine, from an Afghanistan veteran and new kind of military hero.
Before engaging in war, Erik Edstrom asks us to imagine three, rarely imagined scenarios: First, imagine your own death. Second, imagine war from “the other side.” Third: Imagine what might have been if the war had never been fought. Pursuing these realities through his own combat experience, Erik reaches the unavoidable conclusion about America at war. But that realization came too late—the damage had been done.
Erik Edstrom grew up in suburban Massachusetts with an idealistic desire to make an impact, ultimately leading him to the gates of West Point. Five years later, he was deployed to Afghanistan as an infantry lieutenant. Throughout his military career, he confronted atrocities, buried his friends, wrestled with depression, and struggled with an understanding that the war he fought in, and the youth he traded to prepare for it, was in contribution to a bitter truth: The War on Terror is not just a tragedy, but a crime. The deeper tragedy is that our country lacks the courage and conviction to say so.
Un-American is a hybrid of social commentary and memoir that exposes how blind support for war exacerbates the problems it’s intended to resolve, devastates the people allegedly being helped, and diverts assets from far larger threats like climate change. Un-American is a revolutionary act, offering a blueprint for redressing America’s relationship with patriotism, the military, and military spending.
Critic reviews
"Exceptional.... Un-American is most extraordinary because even after the indoctrination of West Point, Edstrom dared to question some of the decisions and the presence of US military as invaders not saviors. For a real look at the marketing of and true cost of war, this is a must-read." (New York Journal of Books)
"A blistering indictment of the American militarist economy and its much-vaunted war on terror. But it isn't Edstrom's anger that gives Un-American its staggering power - although there's plenty of that - but rather the profound thoughtfulness and perception of his observations, earned at such awful cost. Every chickenhawk president, politician and pundit who has had a hand in blithely casting American soldiers into our futile wars should be made to read this book - and to then seek forgiveness." (Scott Anderson, author of Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East)