His recent book -- ably drawn, in a very slightly broad-faced style by noted editorial cartoonist David Bors -- is titled War is Boring
Axe doesn't tell us about his reporting, either the mechanics of it (sources, cameras, power supplies, uploading stories, getting details right) or the stories he covered (Iraq, Lebanon, weaponry trade shows in DC, East Timor, Afghanistan, Somalia) -- War Is Boring is entirely the story of what it felt like to be David Axe, the war correspondent who hates the term, in the moments between action and reporting, on the ground in all of those places, addicted to the thrill and slowly going broke to feed that addiction. This really is an addiction memoir -- though Axe-as-a-character-in-the-book doesn't quite realize that on the page -- focused on Axe's need and longing for war. But this addiction memoir is more along the lines of De Quincey than Mary Karr. Axe doesn't overcome his addiction or transcend it; as far as the reader can tell, Axe is even more addicted to war (though he never quite explains what it is about war that thrills him, and his close calls are mostly things that happen to other people) at the end than he was at the beginning.
War Is Boring is a good collection of scenes, all of them showing David Axe either in a war zone or wishing he was, but it doesn't quite cohere as either pure reportage or a think piece; it remains just David Axe's individual story, without most of the details that would make it really particular and specific. It's not boring, but it doesn't really make the case that war is, either.
Book-A-Day 2010: The Epic Index
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