Author Guide · War Reporting
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In November 2004, during the second battle of Fallujah, Dexter Filkins and the photographer Ash Gilbertson went with a group of Marines to photograph the body of an insurgent at the top of a minaret. On the way up, Lance Corporal William L. Miller, 22, of Pearland, Texas, was shot and killed. Filkins, then a New York Times correspondent, put that day into his book about the wars he had covered since 2001, written after he had filled 561 notebooks. It begins in Kabul in 1998 and ends in Iraq in 2006. This guide covers his one book: what it is about and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 1 key books · 2008–2008 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Dexter Filkins has written one book: The Forever War (2008), published by Alfred A. Knopf, about his reporting in Afghanistan and Iraq. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction and was one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2008. Start there; his later work, for The New Yorker since 2011, is all magazine journalism.
Where to Start with Dexter Filkins
If you want to know what the Iraq war felt like on the ground
→ The Forever War (2008) — car bombs, convoys and the battle of Fallujah.
If you want the background to 9/11
→ The Forever War (2008) — it opens in Taliban-ruled Kabul in 1998.
If you like war reporting in the tradition of Michael Herr
→ The Forever War (2008) — episodic scenes rather than a chronological history.
The Book by Dexter Filkins
The Forever War
Built from Filkins’s reporting for the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, the book runs from Kabul under the Taliban in 1998 to Iraq in the summer of 2006, with a long section on the Taliban and the rise of Al Qaeda before the Iraq chapters. It moves in short, often undated scenes: a car bomb near the Red Cross in Baghdad, a mob in the Shaab neighbourhood, tea with a family whose son was killed crossing from Syria, and a month with the Marines in Fallujah in November 2004. It won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction and the 2009 Colby Award, and The New York Times Book Review named it one of the 10 best books of 2008.
How to Read Dexter Filkins
There is only one book, so there is no order to work out. The Forever War is roughly chronological but episodic: the Afghanistan section sets up the Iraq chapters, so read it from the beginning rather than skipping to Fallujah.
After the book, his reporting continues in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 2011. “Right at the Edge”, his New York Times Magazine piece of 7 September 2008 on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, won a National Magazine Award and was part of the Times’ Pulitzer-winning coverage that year.
A reading path
1. The Forever War (2008)
The years · 1961–2011
Quick facts about Dexter Filkins
- Known for
- Filkins is known for his reporting from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, first for The New York Times and since 2011 for The New Yorker.
- 1961
- Born in Cincinnati, Ohio
- 2008
- The Forever War
- 2011
- Joins The New Yorker
- Born
- 24 May 1961, Cincinnati, Ohio; grew up in Florida
- Education
- University of Florida (BA, political science, 1983); St Antony’s College, Oxford (MPhil, international relations, 1984)
- Worked
- Miami Herald; Los Angeles Times (New Delhi bureau chief); The New York Times from 2000, Baghdad 2003–2006
- Now
- Staff writer at The New Yorker since 2011
- Pulitzer
- Finalist in 2002 for his Afghanistan dispatches; part of the Times team that won International Reporting in 2009
- Honours
- George Polk Awards (2004, 2011); National Magazine Awards (2009, 2011)
The red mark is 2008: The Forever War, his only book.
How Dexter Filkins Writes: The War from the Ground
Filkins set out to write about what the wars felt like rather than what they meant. “I wanted to write less an intellectual book than a visceral one,” he told PBS NewsHour in 2008, and he contrasted it with books written “from 10,000 feet up”. The questions he wanted to answer were concrete: what it is like to be at a car bombing, or to sit across from a sheikh who is lying to you.
The structure follows from that. The book is a run of scenes, many without dates, in which fighting, convoy rides, tea with sources and long waits alternate; reviewers read the looseness as the rhythm of the war rather than a lack of plan. He gives the Iraqis he worked with, his drivers and translators, as much room as the soldiers.
He also writes about his own part in what happened. The Fallujah chapter does not hide that Lance Corporal Miller died on a mission undertaken partly for the journalists’ photograph, and it records a Marine officer telling him it was his fault. In the Columbia Journalism Review, the memoirist Anthony Swofford wrote that “Minute-by-minute war reporting doesn’t get any better than this.”
Watch
Dexter Filkins on The Forever War
War correspondent Dexter Filkins discusses The Forever War, drawn from his New York Times reporting on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the official GBH Forum Network channel.
Frequently asked questions about Dexter Filkins’s books
How many books has Dexter Filkins written?
One: The Forever War (2008). The rest of his work is newspaper and magazine journalism, for The New York Times and, since 2011, The New Yorker.
How many books has Dexter Filkins written?
There is only one so far: The Forever War (2008), published by Alfred A. Knopf.
Where should I start with Dexter Filkins?
With The Forever War (2008), read from the beginning: the Afghanistan section on the Taliban sets up the Iraq chapters that follow.
What is Dexter Filkins’s most famous book?
The Forever War (2008), his only book. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction and was a New York Times bestseller.
What is The Forever War by Dexter Filkins about?
His years reporting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, from Kabul under the Taliban in 1998 to Iraq in 2006, including the November 2004 battle of Fallujah. It is a reporter’s memoir in scenes, not a history of the wars.
Is Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War the same as Joe Haldeman’s?
No. Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1974) is a science-fiction novel. Filkins’s book of the same title (2008) is non-fiction about Afghanistan and Iraq.
Did Dexter Filkins win a Pulitzer Prize?
He was a Pulitzer finalist in 2002 for his reporting from Afghanistan, and in 2009 he was part of the New York Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
What was the controversy over Dexter Filkins’s Alfa Bank story?
In 2018 he reported in The New Yorker on unusual internet traffic between a Trump Organization server and Russia’s Alfa Bank. FBI investigators found no substantiated link, and the Columbia Journalism Review later described the Alfa Bank claims as debunked.
Where does Dexter Filkins work now?
He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2011, after more than a decade at The New York Times.
Footnotes
- Dexter Filkins — Wikipedia
- The Forever War (Filkins book) — Wikipedia
- What happens in war — Columbia Journalism Review
- The Forever War author recounts covering Iraq, Afghanistan wars — PBS NewsHour, 2008
- Dexter Filkins — NYS Writers Institute, 2008
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I wanted to write less an intellectual book than a visceral one, than an emotional one.”
— Dexter Filkins, interview with PBS NewsHour on The Forever War (2008)
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