Overview

A Times Political Book of the Year 2022 A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war’s echoing legacy. Elliot Ackerman left the American military ten years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and, later, as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. When the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August of 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict. The official evacuation process was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe. Ackerman was drawn into an impromptu effort to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. These were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America’s longest war, but the success they achieved afforded a degree of redemption: and, for Ackerman, a chance to reconcile his past with his present. The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week at its bitter end. Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves in a personal history of the war's long progress, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11. It is a play in five acts with a tragic denouement. Any reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war’s trajectory will find a trenchant accounting here. And yet The Fifth Act is not an exercise in finger-pointing: it brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters, who fought the war with courage and dedication, in good faith and at great personal cost. Understanding combatants’ experiences and sacrifices demands reservoirs of wisdom and the gifts of an extraordinary storyteller. In Elliot Ackerman, this story has found that author.The Fifth Act is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic.

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9780008532673

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Reviews

PRAISE FOR ELLIOT ACKERMAN'S PLACES AND NAMES 'What a great, honest book - the kind that makes one feel lucky to have in one's hands ... His understanding of war is so profound that one feels like secrets have been revealed - truths - information that one day may be necessary for our survival. Well done' Sebastian Junger, author of Tribe 'Perhaps the most striking war memoir of the year ... Places and Names is as clean and spare in its prose as it is sharp and unsparing in timely observation' TIME magazine '[A] spare, beautiful memoir ... Places and Names is a classic meditation on war, how it compels and resists our efforts to order it with meaning. In simple, evocative sentences, with sparing but effective glances at poetry and art, [Ackerman] weaves memories of his deployments with his observations in and near Syria. He pulls off a literary account of war that is accessible to those who wonder 'what it's like' while ringing true to those who-each in his or her own way-already know' The New York Times '[Ackerman's] descriptions of Syria, which he visited as a writer, were so painfully evocative for me that I had to stop reading for a time. His vivid, sparse prose bears comparison to that of Tim O'Brien in The Things They Carried or Norman Lewis in Naples '44; Places and Names has the same clear-eyed view of what war is' Spectator 'It's so readable I devoured the book in one plane journey ... a master of dagger-sharp prose and memorable detail' The Times 'Lyrical ... Places and Names ends with a searing and beautiful chapter that details [Ackerman's] thoughts amid the blood, sweat and adrenaline of the Battle of Fallujah ... A thoughtful perspective on America's role overseas' Washington Post

Author Information

Elliot Ackerman is a former White House Fellow and Marine, serving five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor and the Purple Heart. He has written five novels including 2034 which was a New York Times bestseller. His books have been nominated for the National Book Award, three times for the Andrew Carnegie Medal in both fiction and non-fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize among others. His writing often appears in Esquire, The New Yorker, and The New York Times where he is a contributing opinion writer.

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