I’ve finished Jon Krakauer’s “Where Men Win Glory: The Oddysey of Pat Tillman” in the air above the middle of America and I’m furious.  This story begins with the hero dying and it ends with his betrayal by the people who promised us all they would put our interests above theirs.

Krakauer builds a sculpture out of words, and it is an angry art.  In a flat, journalistic style he begins with the creation of Pat Tillman, the birth of the Taliban, and the disturbing story of their meeting in the Graveyard of Empires called Afghanistan.   Instead of the hero meeting his enemy and vanquishing or being vanquished, he is destroyed by the common fuckups of scores of lesser men. He is part of a string of other common tragedies and Krakauer pulls together the infuriating betrayal of Jessica Lynch, Pat Tillman and scores of other men and women of the US Armed Forces by their leadership, carving a bleak relief of giants mired up to their knees in a vast, broken septic system.

The horrible coverup of his death is a crime that’s gone unpunished, and it’s only come to light because Tillman was a famous football player.  Joe and Jane Smith get no such scrutiny, and fall into the trash heap of history.

If you care about honor, this is a good book. If you care about truth or valor, this is a good book.  It’s well written, with a slow, burning build up that leads to an ashfield.  Because this is a story about real life, the villains are not caught, the hero isn’t crowned and the story doesn’t end at the climax.  If you’ve got friends in the US Armed Forces, please make sure that they read this.  When we send our heroes to war we know that they might die, but we don’t expect that they will be used so cheaply and with so little respect.