The Long Walk - “It may be the most important book written about modern war.”

This is a book that displays how we create enemies - terrorists- in these types of war, and why soldiers get addicted to combat!

Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them in Iraq as the head of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit. Whenever IEDs were discovered, he and his men would lead the way in either disarming the deadly devices or searching through rubble and remains for clues to the bomb-makers’ identities. And when robots and other remote means failed, one technician would suit up and take the Long Walk to disarm the bomb by hand. This lethal game of cat and mouse was, and continues to be, the real war within America’s wars in the Middle East. When Brian returned stateside to his wife and family, he entered an equally inexorable struggle against the enemy within, which he comes to call the “Crazy.”

This thrilling, heartbreaking, stunningly honest book alternates between two harrowing realities: the terror, excitement, and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the unshakeable fear, anxiety, and survivor guilt that he—like so many veterans—carries inside.


“It may be the most important book written about modern war.” – Stephen Phillips, author Proximity and The Recipient’s Son

“I think my favorite [book of the Iraq War] so far is The Long Walk, a memoir by a bomb-disposal technician, Brian Castner.” – Tom Ricks, author of The Generals, The Gamble, and Fiasco
“A candid and unflinching account … [that] warps the arc of the traditional coming-of-age story.” – Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
An Amazon Best Book of 2012
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
An Indiebound Next List Selection
Chautauqua Literary & Scientific Circle 2013 Selection
Soon to be an American Lyric Theater opera
On February 6th, 2010, I went Crazy. I didn’t know why, or how to fix it. I just knew it was intolerable, and it had to stop, one way or the other. I make sense of the world by writing, so to understand what was happening to me I wrote a book about it, the best way I knew how.
The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows is the intertwined story of two journeys: an outward struggle of surviving the urban combat of modern war in order to return home at all costs, and the inward journey to find the new person that emerges after undertaking such a task. I had the privilege to command two Explosive Ordnance Disposal units in Iraq. We disrupted roadside improvised explosive devices, investigated the aftermath of car bombs, and searched house-to-house to find bomb makers where they lived. It was a job I embraced and enjoyed, and I found meaning in the work and camaraderie in the Brotherhood of operators who do that job. And despite being surrounded by the gory horrors of war and facing near-death experiences, I somehow never considered what life would be like once I went on the final call to dismantle a roadside bomb.
Once I got back to the United States and left the military, once I was home alone with nothing but my thoughts, I couldn’t put the war aside and move on. Even as I had trouble remembering the formative moments that comprised my former life – children being born, family milestones – small everyday occurences reminded me of each mission in Iraq, and the experience of the war endured. After countless trips to the hospital emergency room for heart attacks that never happened, I realized that the problem was in my mind. This book examines my struggle to confront the new person who came home from Iraq.
Praise:
“The Long Walk is a raw, wrenching, blood-soaked chronicle of the human cost of war. Brian Castner, the leader of a military bomb disposal team, recounts his deployment to Iraq with unflinching candor, and in the process exposes crucial truths not only about this particular conflict, but also about war throughout history. Castner’s memoir brings to mind Erich Maria Remarque’s masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front. ” – Jon Krakauer, author of Where Men Win Glory
“Do you want to know a little something about our war in Iraq?  Begin with The Long Walk, Brian Castner’s elegant, superbly written story about the bomb-disposal guys.  As you read think of Alan Sillitoe’s The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.  Castner gives us that steady rhythm of one foot in front of the other.  Think of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.  Here is the reality of the exhausted mind, and of profound thought wandering all Creation: this is what I saw, this is what I did, this is what I have become.  It’s the story of the long walk out, as they say, from the Humvee to the bomb in the street, and the long look back.” – Larry Heinemann, author of the National Book Award-winning Paco’s Story and Close Quarters
“Castner has written a powerful book about the long cost of combat and the brotherhood of men at arms.  Remarkably, he has made the world of EOD entertaining, occasionally hilarious, and always harrowing. His honesty is refreshing and the book is written with such candor and openness that one can’t help but root for him. And did I mention that it is entertaining? There were scenes at work with the bomb disposal unit where I found myself holding my breath.”– Anthony Swofford, author of Jarhead
“It may be the most important book written about modern war.” – Stephen Phillips, author Proximity and The Recipient’s Son

Brian,
I caught the tail end of your interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. I haven’t read your book, and I don’t want to presume that you share my attitudes but it sounds like maybe you do, so here goes.
We have turned the word ‘hero’ into a cliche. Anyone who puts on a uniform, who goes into a war zone, or who is injured or killed, is a hero. It is a manifestation of how much we love war, that we so much love the warrior.
Ours is a war-mongering culture. We don’t admit that to ourselves, but it is. I noticed at the start of the Gulf War how we drank it up an loved it, epitomized by George H. W. Bush’s remark that we have “kicked the Vietnam syndrome”.
I have not been a warrior, so coming from me it does not carry any weight, but I think that to end our love affair with war we first stop praising the warrior. To say that out loud in our society invites scorn. If former warriors would say it, it might effect a change.
Sincerely,
Tim Seiter


Glad you are writing another book. Your long walk, it seems to me, is far from over. I finished reading “The Long Walk” during the course of a three-day, cross-country business trip. Flying over the desert southwest intensified the mental imagery of your prose with actual visual imagery for me. This morning I found my copy of Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” It’s been called the masterwork of the Vietnam era, and your book reminded me of it. I am a West Point grad who served in the ’80’s. I missed Vietnam and did not hang around for the current wars, though many of my classmates did. Thank you for sharing your interior journey, it helps. There where a couple of references in “The Long Walk” to a rosary. Where did it go?