American Author's Association
"Fainaru's detailed and emotional story about contract mercenaries fighting in Iraq is not only timely, but also presents a side of that war that needs to be shown...It certainly makes one stop and rethink the direction this country has taken with how this war and future wars will be fought...Entertaining and action filled...Brilliantly crafted."
"Washington Times," 2/1/09
"Compelling, brutal, disturbing."
"Time Magazine," November 2008
"[A] harrowing expose."
"Penthouse," December 2008
"If you read only one book about the war in Iraq, make it this one."
"Army Times, Marine Corps Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times," 11/24/08
""Big Boy Rules" is another eye opener -- and, in the end, a tear-inducer -- about the loose ties and loose management of contractors' employees."
"Washington Post Book World," 12/14/08
"The most vivid account to date of the misfits, thugs, and outright psychotics who kill with impunity under corporate flags...this book is consistently engaging and powerfully instructive."
"Minneapolis Star Tribune"
""Big Boy Rules" [is] on the must-have list...Fainaru's skill lies in unwrapping the folly of the war on a personal level that is both enlightening and chilling."
"Norfolk Virginian-Pilot," 1/18/09
"A valuable addition to the small but growing body of books on the privatization of warfare. His book is a gritty, ground-level examination of how the lines of accountability become blurred when a nation farms out an unpopular war to hired hands...Fainaru poses a host of compelling questions."
"Metro Spirit," 12/08
"Chilling, gripping and stunning in its delivery, method and detail...A must-read book for any American the least bit concerned with the actions, reputation, and circumstances of American activity overseas."
"Washington Post Book World," 12/14/08
"The most vivid account to date of the misfits, thugs, and outright psychotics who kill with impunity under corporate flags...this book is consistently engaging and powerfully instructive."
"Minneapolis Star Tribune"
""Big Boy Rules" [is] on the must-have list...Fainaru's skill lies in unwrapping the folly of the war on a personal level that is both enlightening and chilling."
"Metro Spirit," 12/08
"Chilling, gripping and stunning in its delivery, method and detail...A must-read book for any American the least bit concerned with the actions, reputation, and circumstances of American activity overseas."
"Seattle Post Intelligencer,"12/08
"An important, timely, scathing new book."
"San Francisco Chronicle," 11/28/08
"If Jeremy Scahill's provocative "Blackwater" is an eye-opener about the political ties and big finances of one contractor, then "Big Boy Rules" is another eye-opener--and in the end a tear-inducer--about the loose ties and loose management of contractors' employees"
"St. Louis Post-Dispatch," 11/30/08
""Big Boy Rules" reads more like a novel than a newspaper as it weaves Cote's life into the larger story of the shoot-'em-up security contractors."
"Seattle Post Intelligencer," 12/5/08
"An important, timely, scathing new book"
"Time Magazine," 11/14/08
"[A] harrowing expose."
"Kirkus," 10/15/08
"Fainaru takes to heart the old journalistic adage, 'show, don't tell, ' as he portrays men seeking to escape difficult personal circumstances, who crave adventure even if it means losing their lives...An informative, dramatic look at a significant, often unexamined, aspect of contemporary military culture."
Thomas E. Ricks
"Steve Fainaru tells a story that is at the heart of the war in Iraq: the U.S. military's unprecedented reliance on mercenaries. It is a dark tale that until now has remained largely untold, and is related brilliantly here. To understand this war, you must read this book."
Thomas E. Ricks, senior military correspondent, "The Washington Post," and author of "Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003-05"
"Steve Fainaru tells a story that is at the heart of the war in Iraq: the U.S. military's unprecedented reliance on mercenaries. It is a dark tale that until now has remained largely untold, and is related brilliantly here. To understand this war, you must read this book."
For this mordant dispatch from one of the Iraq War's seamiest sides, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post correspondent Fainaru embedded with some of the thousands of "private security contractors" who chauffeur officials, escort convoys and add their own touch of mayhem to the conflict. Exempt from Iraqi law and oversight by the U.S. government, which doesn't even record their casualties, the mercenaries, Fainaru writes, play by "Big Boy Rules"-which often means no rules at all as they barrel down highways in the wrong direction, firing on any vehicle in their path. (His report on the Blackwater company, infamous for killing Iraqi civilians and getting away with it, is meticulous and chilling.) Fainaru's depiction of the mercenaries' crassness and callousness is unsparing, but he sympathizes with these often inexperienced, badly equipped hired guns struggling to cope with a dirty war. Nor is he immune to the romance of the soldier of fortune, especially in his somewhat bathetic portrait of Jon Coté, Iraq War veteran and lost soul who joined the fly-by-night Crescent Security Group and was kidnapped by insurgents. Fainaru's vivid reportage makes the mercenary's dubious motives and chaotic methods a microcosm of a misbegotten war. (Nov. 17)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
In the past three years, a sudden literature encompassing over a dozen books of journalism, scholarship, and memoir has documented the rise of private security firms in Iraq and as part of other recent conflicts. Fainaru (coauthor, with Ray Sanchez, The Duke of Havana: Baseball, Cuba, and the Search for the American Dream) won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for his Washington Post series on the companies that grew in Iraq "like mushrooms after a rainstorm, some with boards of directors and glass offices, others that are scarcely more than armed gangs." He shows that these firms operated all but outside the law and beyond oversight, "the largest use of private forces in the history of American warfare," whether it was the notorious Blackwater, a large State Department contractor, or Crescent Security, a small profiteer whose reckless activity is the primary subject of Fainaru's reporting. Five Crescent employees whom Fainaru came to know were ambushed, kidnapped, and murdered, and his skillful injection of a personal element into the larger story makes this a highly engaging book, among the best written so far on this subject. Recommended for all libraries.
—Bob Nardini
