Well-deserved Accolade for "The Good Soldiers"

David Finkel's The Good Soldiers, which I reviewed last month, was just announced as the winner of the 2010 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, beating out his fellow nominees with books ranging "from oil to women’s rights to the financial crisis" (The Daily Beast).

I have to admit I'm not surprised. I was super impressed by Finkel's account of the 2-16 Battalion, to the point where I've been recommending it to people left and right.

Here's what The Daily Beast had to say about the memoir:

While Washington bickered over the merits of George W. Bush’s surge, David Finkel headed off to Iraq for The Washington Post to see what was actually happening there. The result is one of the most compelling books on war since Michael Herr’s Dispatches. There is no better example of why great journalists matter than to be taken into Finkel’s devastating, harrowing, and moving account of one battalion’s efforts to turn the tide in their bloody section of Baghdad. It takes spirit and an admittedly slightly perverse sense of self-preservation to do what he did and insert yourself into the middle of a war, but as he spoke on Tuesday night it was clear that he did it for the soldiers as much as for us readers.

Click HERE to read about the other nominees

Congrats, David! (not that he readsmy blog lol)