Christopher Hedges discusses how human beings are conditioned to embrace what he calls "the myth of war"; the idea that combat is noble, selfless, and glorious. In his new book War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, which draws on the literature of combat, from Homer and Shakespeare to Erich Maria Remarque and Michael Herr, as well as his firsthand experience, Hedges reveals the reality of war; the destruction of culture, the perversion of human desire, and the embrace, ultimately, of death over life.
New York Times reporter Chris Hedges is author and 20-year war correspondent who shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of global terrorism. In his 20 years as a journalist for many of the most respected news organizations in the United States, Hedges has reported from the world's most war-ravaged regions, from the Middle East and Central America to the Balkans and the Persian Gulf. For more than a decade, Hedges covered hot spots for *The New York Times*, first in 1991 in Operation Desert Storm, then in Bosnia and Kosovo from 1995-98, and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, he was part of a team of *Times* reporters that were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism for the paper's 2001 coverage of terrorism. The winner of numerous other awards for his coverage, he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism.