Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story

<b>&quot;Destined to become a classic text on the absurdities of war. . . A beautifully written account of a young Israeli soldier's experience. A stunning achievement.&quot; - Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer and <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>The Good Spy</i></b><br> <br> It was one small hilltop in a small, unnamed war in the late 1990s, but it would send out ripples still felt worldwide today. The hill, in Lebanon, was called the Pumpkin; <i>flowers</i> was the military code word for &quot;casualties.&quot; Award-winning writer Matti Friedman re-creates the harrowing experience of a band of young soldiers--the author among them--charged with holding this remote outpost, a task that changed them forever and foreshadowed the unwinnable conflicts the United States would soon confront in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.<br><br> Part memoir, part reportage, part military history, this powerful narrative captures the birth of today's chaotic Middle East and the rise of a twenty-first-century type of war in which there is never a clear victor, and media images can be as important as the battle itself. Raw and beautifully rendered, <i>Pumpkinflowers </i>will take its place among classic war narratives by George Orwell, Philip Caputo, and Vasily Grossman. It is an unflinching look at the way we conduct war today.<br><br> &quot;Inspiring, heartbreaking, illuminating. Matti Friedman's brilliant account of a forgotten war seen through the lens of a simple soldier is at once a coming-of-age story and an essential chronicle about how the twenty-first century was born.&quot; - <b>Yossi Klein Halevi, author of <i>Like Dreamers</i></b><br><br>