Filkins captures the details of war like few other writers

By Henry C. Jackson Associated Press

For generations, war correspondence has been a hallowed art of journalism, a specialty craft in which even the most deft and skilled writers often fail — or for good reason never endeavor to try. Dexter Filkins is one of war writing's modern marvels, a writer of tremendous gifts and the appropriate grit to go where others will not. His newspaper work has put him in a pantheon of fine war writers, and his remarkable new book, The Forever War, is a testament to why he belongs.