American War

Wow - an amazing, disturbing, engaging, thrilling, page-turning and terrifying first novel by a journalist who has covered stories from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring and the protests in Ferguson, MO. So, when he imagines what a future U.S. (the novel begins in 2074) ravaged by climate change and resource depletion, looks like when it hurtles into a second Civil War, you know he writes with experience and authority. While I found the story of the family at the center of the novel to be compelling, his description of the war (told between the narrative chapters via “historical” documents, ala “World War Z”) was most riveting. No spoilers here about the details of how the U.S. and the world looks five and a half decades from now - one has to read this novel to grasp the potentiality of what is imagined. Even a glance at the U.S. map (in the first pages), carved out by rising sea levels, with the new, well inland (to handle the Great Inland Migration) from the coasts, capital of Columbus, Ohio (my hometown) shows what a future could look like. I'm hoping for a sequel in which El Akkad - continues the history of the “universe” he's created here - to better understand what happened to cause it - so that we can better avoid it actually happening. A must-read and must-discuss novel for our troubled and uncertain times.