Reviewer Robert 'Bob' Bluffield : Robert is a UK author/general writer and photographer living in the English Home Counties. His latest book Imperial Airways – The Birth of the British Airline Industry 1914-1940 was published in October 2009 by Ian Allan and was quickly acclaimed Book of the Month in two leading aviation magazines. Although he has a strong interest in civil aviation history; Bob also writes informatively about food, social history, current affairs, photography, travel, motoring and business for a variety of consumer and specialist publications and websites. He has previously written three other books on photography and business and is currently working on a political/social history of 'Broken Britain' during the first decade of the 21sr century as well as his first novel. Follow HERE to learn more about Robert or HERE to visit his writing site. Robert also has several blogs, one of which you can follow HERE.
Authors: Christopher Durante & Julian Van Bellinghen
Published by: World Audience Publishers – New York
ISBN: 978-1-935444-43-5
Authors: Christopher Durante & Julian Van Bellinghen
Published by: World Audience Publishers – New York
ISBN: 978-1-935444-43-5
Click Here To Purchase 330 Days: The Uncensored War in Iraq
This is essentially a picture book that documents the coalition’s involvement in Iraq from the US soldier’s viewpoint. It is certainly not for the faint hearted as it contains some extremely poignant, but necessary, images of dismembered bomb victims and those caught in street fighting and ambushes. The only text contained in the book is short and forms only the captions that explain each of the photographs, but there is little need for words because the images, in the main, speak volumes about the total barbarity of war. The book is hard hitting, harsh and concerning and clearly will shock but they show some of the real dangers the coalition troops were exposed to in Iraq and now in Afghanistan.
330 days (presumably the period one of the authors served in Iraq) sets out to put the viewer on the front line by attempting to show the realities of a country that will probably never recover from the devastation caused by a dreadful regime and a tyrant leader that was devised to release the Iraqi people. It has failed of course and while there are the infighting between the Ba’ath, Sunni and Shia continues there will never be peace. The images, taken by active soldiers with ordinary inexpensive cameras, as the co-authors state, are of a kind that any newspaper would never dare publish, and they are right. The nature of many of the photographs will, no doubt, also cause embarrassment for the US Government who dislikes the true horrors of the conflict being exposed to the electorate.
The authors are clearly making a statement by publishing this book but it does leave me wondering who will buy it? As a documentary of what US military personnel have experienced on the streets of Baghdad it works well but I am not quite sure where, because of the gruesome images contained in the book, will fit into most buyers’ bookcases. The cover should, in any event carry a public warning because some people who open the book will be disturbed by many of the photographs that show blown off body parts and entrails that are the result of a violent explosion of shooting. Nevertheless, there is bound to be an audience for a book that holds back no punches to reveal reasons why so many coalition troops have been psychologically damaged by their experiences in this war.