the chosen few book review

'Chosen Few' is a searing account of war in Afghanistan

In 2008, seven years after America invaded Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, it was a largely forgotten war. George W. Bush’s administration had diverted its attention — and much of the nation’s military resources — to Iraq, where a second war was not going well.

But in remote sections of Afghanistan, aptly named the “Graveyard of Empires,” American soldiers still were being tasked with holding forbidding chunks of real estate, battling insurgents, and winning the hearts and minds of local residents.

The Chosen Few: A Company of Paratroopers and Its Heroic Struggle to Survive in the Mountains of Afghanistan  is about one such godforsaken place and the sacrifices made there by some 150 Army soldiers from “Chosen Company.” It is a remarkable story, whose telling raises myriad questions without resorting to polemics. It is unlikely that those who read it will ever utter the phrase, “Thank you for your service,” quite the same way again.

The Chosen Few (Da Capo Press, 370 pp., ***½ out of four stars) is a gripping, exhaustively reported account of modern warfare: The GIs versus the Jihadis. Author Gregg Zoroya — a veteran USA TODAY war correspondent, and now a member of its editorial board — cuts through the fog of war by drawing on numerous sources, among them hundreds of interviews with participants and their families, official postmortems, and videos of the action taken by soldiers and insurgents alike.

Zoroya delivers the adrenaline of combat right to the reader’s easy chair. His prose is direct and clear, and never upstages the action. He also brings the warriors to life, chronicling their trials and triumphs before, during and after three searing firefights. Some are wounded and fight on. Some die horrific deaths. Astounding bravery is commonplace. Be prepared to flinch.

Chosen Company, circa 2008, was a motley crew of mostly very young men, or “lost boys,” as the author dubs them. Many hailed from broken homes and troubled pasts, and the Army provided not only a challenge and an escape hatch, but also a surrogate family.

Ryan Pitts, who never knew his father, joined the Army at 18. Four years later — riddled with shrapnel and unable to walk or fully use one hand — Pitts gathered what weapons he could, crawled to a defensive position and fought on, fully expecting to die, either from loss of blood or enemy bullets.

Pitts was the last man alive in Topside, a makeshift observation post high above an unfinished base in the remote village of Wanat. Its residents had fled, leaving their houses as cover for the insurgents to use. They had neglected to tell the Americans of the impending attack. The local police, though they feigned innocence later, took part in the assault. It is unlikely that the hearts and minds of these people were winnable from the get-go.

The inevitable question is why the Americans were there in the first place, in the remote Waigal Valley. Previous attacks had led them to abandon two nearby posts, and, like them, Wanat was vulnerable, flanked by mountains that provided ideal cover for attackers. The Army abandoned the base three days after the deadly assault.

Zoroya doesn’t take sides. He lets the facts and comments of others fall where they may. Pitts was not among those who blamed higher-ups, whether in his company, in Kabul or in Washington. He didn’t see himself as a victim.

In a remarkable statement, reflecting a sentiment shared by many of his brothers in Chosen Company, he said, “It’s crazy to say, but I had some of the best times in my life with those guys in Afghanistan.”

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The Chosen Few

A Company of Paratroopers and Its Heroic Struggle to Survive in the Mountains of Afghanistan

by Gregg Zoroya

Foreword by Admiral William H. McRaven

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The Chosen Few

A Company of Paratroopers and Its Heroic Struggle to Survive in the Mountains of Afghanistan

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By Gregg Zoroya

Foreword by Admiral William H. McRaven

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JUDAS PRIEST

The chosen few, track listing:.

01. Diamonds And Rust 02. Dissident Aggressor 03. Exciter (1978) 04. Beyond The Realms Of Death 05. Delivering The Goods 06. The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown) 07. The Ripper 08. Victim Of Changes 09. Breaking The Law 10. Rapid Fire 11. Grinder 12. Living After Midnight 13. Screaming For Vengeance 14. You've Got Another Thing Coming 15. The Sentinel 16. Turbo Lover 17. Painkiller

You already know the deal about compilation albums from legendary bands. There are about a billion of them out there; some better than others, but most of which make things like ratings virtually meaningless. That same argument was made in a review of UFO 's "Best of a Decade" . Much the same can be said about JUDAS PRIEST 's "The Chosen Few" , except that it does capture nicely a representative retrospective of the band's catalogue up through "Painkiller" , certainly in terms of song selection, stylistic variation, and overall flow. Those selections also happen to be chosen by a who's who of rock and metal icons, including members of SLAYER , DEF LEPPARD , QUEENSRŸCHE , WHITESNAKE , METALLICA , SLIPKNOT , BLACK SABBATH , LAMB OF GOD , and many others. KISS ' Gene Simmons even gets into the act by way of his succinct tribute to JUDAS PRIEST in the liner notes, which also contain commentary from each musician on his song choice. So blame those folks for the exclusion of tracks like "Heading out to the Highway" , "Hell Bent for Leather" , "Sinner" , "Electric Eye" , or "Freewheel Burning" . If you're that concerned about it, you can always purchase "Metal Works: 73 - 93" , which is quite comprehensive.

"The Chosen Few" captures the various musical periods of JUDAS PRIEST , although it is the more electrifying live versions (from "Unleashed in the East" ) of early classics "The Ripper" ( Ozzy 's favorite) and the dynamic "Victim of Changes" (on which James Hetfield comments) that demonstrate the band's far-reaching effect on metal. Similarly, the cover of JOAN BAEZ 's "Diamonds and Rust" (studio version included here),which has DEF LEPPARD 's Joe Elliott waxing nostalgic, works on multiple levels, not the least of which pertains to how JUDAS PRIEST breathed new life into a song and turned it into its very own classic.

Then you've got '70s examples of a more extreme form of heavy metal that still stand the test of time, namely "Dissident Aggressor" and "Exciter" . The former has gotten praise across the metal community with SLAYER being one of the better known bands with a strong cover version. Interestingly enough, it is Geoff Tate and Steve Vai who share their thoughts about "Dissident Aggressor" , while ACCEPT points to the track as an example of why JUDAS PRIEST are considered pioneers.

Of course, the other legendary track — in terms of both positive feedback and negative connotations — from "Stained Class" is "Beyond the Reams of Death" . It is a song that Lars Ulrich ( METALLICA ) describes as "the blueprint for the epic rock ballad," but its darkness and indefinable heaviness belies conventional ideas of "rock" and "ballad."

Moving into an era where punch, crunch, and directness defined albums like "Hell Bent for Leather" and "British Steel" , the compilation includes the underrated "Delivering the Goods" ( Kerry King 's pick), "Grinder" ( Zakk Wylde 's pick),the precision impact of "Breaking the Law" (the pick of MOTÖRHEAD 's Lemmy ),and JUDAS PRIEST 's most known anthem "Living After Midnight" , the song that is showered with praise by Alice Cooper and BLACK SABBATH 's Geezer Butler . It's not surprising to read that "Rapid Fire" is the choice of PANTERA 's Vinnie Paul , given its pure metal power. A brilliantly interpreted cover of FLEETWOOD MAC 's "The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown)" from "Hell Bent for Leather" — about which both Randy Blythe ( LAMB OF GOD ) and David Coverdale ( WHITESNAKE ) comment — would also become an unlikely heavy metal classic.

"The Chosen Few" mines subsequent albums with "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" ( SLIPKNOT 's Corey Taylor , SCORPIONS ' Klaus Meine ),which is nearly equal in status to "Living After Midnight" , and the ahead-of-its-time heaviness of "Screaming for Vengeance" ( Slash 's pick). The choice of "The Sentinel" by FOZZY 's Chris Jericho speaks to that cut's continually rising status as a definitive JUDAS PRIEST skull-crusher, a cover of which is also included as a bonus track on MACHINE HEAD 's "Unto the Locust" . Rounding out the compilation are left-turn track "Turbo Lover" from the polarizing "Turbo" , a selection of KORN 's Jonathan Davis , and the reinvigorated extremism of "Painkiller" , a track chosen by Joe Satriani .

As someone who owns (or has owned) just about every proper studio and live album that JUDAS PRIEST has ever released, I found myself a bit surprised at how much I enjoyed this compilation. Then again, if you're a JUDAS PRIEST fan, particularly the first Halford era, then that's hardly a surprise. Maybe that combined with the track selection and commentary summates the reasoning. But since I've already got all of the tracks, then I'd have no reason to purchase this one unless I just couldn't live without the liner note commentary. As it turns out I can indeed live without it, which is no slam on the interesting and informative content. We've already discussed the deal. If you are new to the band, then "The Chosen Few" would be a good, affordable way to dive headfirst into that vast JUDAS PRIEST ocean. Otherwise, it's a toss-up. We'll call it an 8 for whatever that's worth in this context.

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The Chosen Few

Maristella Botticini

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• United States
• United Kingdom

The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492

• Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein

How the Jewish people went from farmers to merchants

• The Princeton Economic History of the Western World

• Download Cover

In 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia. By 1492 the Jewish people had become a small group of literate urbanites specializing in crafts, trade, moneylending, and medicine in hundreds of places across the Old World, from Seville to Mangalore. What caused this radical change? The Chosen Few presents a new answer to this question by applying the lens of economic analysis to the key facts of fifteen formative centuries of Jewish history. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein offer a powerful new explanation of one of the most significant transformations in Jewish history while also providing fresh insights into the growing debate about the social and economic impact of religion.

Awards and Recognition

• Winner of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award in Scholarship
• One of Jewish Ideas Daily.com's 40 Best Jewish Books of 2012

"[A]mbitious . . . systematically dismantle much of the conventional wisdom about medieval Jewish history."—Jonathan B. Krasner, Forward

"[W]here so many have simply taken as a given universal literacy among Jews, [Botticini and Eckstein] find that a majority of Jews actually weren't willing to invest in Jewish education, with the shocking result that more than two-thirds of the Jewish community disappeared toward the end of the first millennium. . . . The astonishing theory presented here has great implications for both the Jewish community and the broader world today."—Steven Weiss, Slate

"[E]ventually, The Chosen Few will have changed the course of history in the Middle East . . . as part of a broad reinterpretation of the history of the peopling of the world, underway for a century and a half, that has begun gathering force since the 1990s. . . . This may be the first you have heard about The Chosen Few , but I pretty much guarantee you that it will not be the last."—David Warsh, Economic Principals

"[P]rovocative."— Choice

"Botticini and Eckstein's simple yet sophisticated human capital analysis provides new insights into Jewish history for the fourteen centuries covered in this book. . . . [Their] methodology yields a very convincing Cliometric analysis that we can expect to inform all future economic histories of the Jews between 70 and 1492."—Carmel U. Chiswick, EH.net

"I found The Chosen Few , a book on Jewish economic history by Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, enormously enlightening and relevant to the draft-the-Haredim debate."—Shlomo Maital, Jerusalem Report

"If you've ever wondered how the Chosen People survived the vagaries of history, reading The Chosen Few will give you answers you cannot find anywhere else."— Huffington Post

"This is a trailblazing, original, illuminating and horizon-broadening book."—Manuel Trajtenberg, Haaretz

"Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein have written a remarkably interesting book with a new hypothesis about the occupational structure of the Jews. The authors adduce serious evidence for their hypothesis, which lays stress on the requirement introduced nearly 2,000 years ago for universal male literacy among the Jews. This is a fascinating and persuasive combination of history and economics, worth reading by all, even the unhappy few who like neither history nor economics."—Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel

" The Chosen Few is a masterpiece: an ambitious, informed, and inspirational reinterpretation of Jewish social and economic history."—Avner Greif, Stanford University

"In this bracing work of economic history, Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein demonstrate how literacy and contract law combined to give Jews a competitive advantage in urbanizing societies. Sure to generate controversy, The Chosen Few takes on one of the truly big questions in Jewish history and sheds intriguing new light on it."—David Biale, University of California, Davis

"Botticini and Eckstein are changing the way economic historians think about Jewish history, and this seminal book will also change the way historians, Jewish studies scholars, and general readers think about the subject. Indeed, the importance of this book can scarcely be exaggerated. An excellent example of economic history that is accessible to general readers, The Chosen Few makes a compelling case for an exciting new perspective that will inspire much further research and be the focus of attention for years to come."—Carmel Chiswick, George Washington University

"This is a mature, original, and significant new attempt to answer one of the most vexing problems in Jewish and economic history. For the general reader it provides an incisive view of the salient facts of Jewish economic history. For the economic historian it opens up a challenging new thesis. And for historians of Judaism and religion it provides a new interpretation of the social and economic impact of religion."—Michael Toch, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492 (The Princeton Economic History of the Western World, 42) Hardcover – August 5, 2012

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How the Jewish people went from farmers to merchants In 70 CE, the Jews were an agrarian and illiterate people living mostly in the Land of Israel and Mesopotamia. By 1492 the Jewish people had become a small group of literate urbanites specializing in crafts, trade, moneylending, and medicine in hundreds of places across the Old World, from Seville to Mangalore. What caused this radical change? The Chosen Few presents a new answer to this question by applying the lens of economic analysis to the key facts of fifteen formative centuries of Jewish history. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein offer a powerful new explanation of one of the most significant transformations in Jewish history while also providing fresh insights into the growing debate about the social and economic impact of religion.

• Part of series The Princeton Economic History of the Western World
• Print length 344 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Princeton University Press
• Publication date August 5, 2012
• Dimensions 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 inches
• ISBN-10 0691144877
• ISBN-13 978-0691144870
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

From the inside flap.

"Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein have written a remarkably interesting book with a new hypothesis about the occupational structure of the Jews. The authors adduce serious evidence for their hypothesis, which lays stress on the requirement introduced nearly 2,000 years ago for universal male literacy among the Jews. This is a fascinating and persuasive combination of history and economics, worth reading by all, even the unhappy few who like neither history nor economics." --Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel

" The Chosen Few is a masterpiece: an ambitious, informed, and inspirational reinterpretation of Jewish social and economic history." --Avner Greif, Stanford University

"In this bracing work of economic history, Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein demonstrate how literacy and contract law combined to give Jews a competitive advantage in urbanizing societies. Sure to generate controversy, The Chosen Few takes on one of the truly big questions in Jewish history and sheds intriguing new light on it." --David Biale, University of California, Davis

"Botticini and Eckstein are changing the way economic historians think about Jewish history, and this seminal book will also change the way historians, Jewish studies scholars, and general readers think about the subject. Indeed, the importance of this book can scarcely be exaggerated. An excellent example of economic history that is accessible to general readers, The Chosen Few makes a compelling case for an exciting new perspective that will inspire much further research and be the focus of attention for years to come." --Carmel Chiswick, George Washington University

"This is a mature, original, and significant new attempt to answer one of the most vexing problems in Jewish and economic history. For the general reader it provides an incisive view of the salient facts of Jewish economic history. For the economic historian it opens up a challenging new thesis. And for historians of Judaism and religion it provides a new interpretation of the social and economic impact of religion." --Michael Toch, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

From the Back Cover

About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., the chosen few, princeton university press, chapter one.

Excerpted from The Chosen Few by Maristella Botticini Zvi Eckstein Copyright © 2012 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; 1st edition (August 5, 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 344 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691144877
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691144870
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 0.1 x 0.1 x 0.1 inches
• #898 in History of Judaism
• #1,626 in Economic History (Books)
• #3,544 in History of Christianity (Books)

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Maristella botticini.

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Zvi Eckstein

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‘The Chosen’ at 50

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By John Williams

• Nov. 18, 2016

Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen,” about the intense, complicated friendship between two Jewish boys who meet in 1940s Brooklyn, is one of a select few novels to consistently remain on school reading lists across the country. A new edition has just been published to commemorate the book’s 50th anniversary, which officially comes in 2017.

In The Times in 1967, Eliot Fremont-Smith praised the novel’s opening scene, a “rousing softball game between two Jewish parochial schools that quickly explodes into a bloody holy war.” But otherwise, he found it a “long, earnest, somewhat affecting and sporadically fascinating” novel in which “the characters never come fully alive because . . . they don’t have ideas so much as they represent ideas.” He called it “an interesting but awkward novel, and both the interest and the awkwardness are because of its heavy emphasis on theme. One wants to like the book very much, and does somewhat.”

The following month in the Book Review, Hugh Nissenson offered a more positive but still mixed opinion, calling the novel’s style “rough and unpolished,” though the story it tells “delights.” By 2002, when he gave a speech at the University of Pennsylvania, Nissenson had come to a less hesitant admiration of the book. A transcript of his talk is published in the new edition, which includes more than 100 pages of other supporting material, including other writings by Potok and critical essays examining the book’s approaches to Brooklyn and to Judaism. “ ‘The Chosen’ is harmonious in all its parts,” Nissenson told his audience in 2002, and it “remains in the mind like the memory of actual experience. It gives the illusion of life.”

“In my personal life . . . I am a nice guy, and I’m joyful, I love to tell jokes and so on, and I have a great sustaining group of close friends, and wonderful children, but in my heart I am more depressed than Samuel Beckett.” — T.C. Boyle, in an interview with Motherboard

A Bonus From Chabon

A. O. Scott reviews Michael Chabon’s new novel, “Moonglow,” on the cover this week. Along with it, we are publishing an exclusive short story by Chabon, “The Sandmeyer Reaction,” which began its life as part of “Moonglow” but didn’t make it into the final version. Chabon explains in a preface to the story that he was stunned when he found it unnecessary to the larger arc of his project, given that he initially felt it would be the “pole star, the anchor, the heart of the book.” He writes: “Its surprising isolation from the novel it did so much to shape also gives me hope that it might truly stand on its own, and bring the reader at least as much pleasure as the writing of it, however wasted or misguided, brought to me.”

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