A close-up description of life in a single platoon during the conflict in Afghanistan. The author was an embedded journalist and his approach is really interesting. He focuses less on the cause and effect of the war than he does on the psychological toll it takes - and the changes it makes - in the young soldiers around him. There's an impressive list of psychological studies in the back of the book, and he refers to these throughout in trying to explain the effects that war has on the individual soldier, and on small groups of such.

It's kind of a depressing read, in that I ended wondering just how any of these men could possibly integrate back into society once they left the military - but they're wondering too, and not at all confident of their ability to do so.