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A book which needs to be read.

In November 2011, Geoff Dyer fulfilled a childhood dream of spending time on an aircraft carrier. Dyer’s stay on the USS George Bush, on active service in the Arabian Gulf, proved even more intense, memorable, and frequently hilarious, than he could ever have hoped. In Dyer’s hands, the warship becomes a microcosm for a stocktaking of modern Western life: religion, drugs, chauvinism, farting, gyms, steaks, prayer, parental death, relationships and how to have a beach party with 5000 people on a giant floating hunk of steel. Piercingly perceptive and gloriously funny, this is a unique book about work, war and entering other worlds.

Review: This is an interesting insight into the psyche of the American military mind. It’s the American psyche as seen through the perceptive eyes of a notable and internationally acclaimed writer who has exceptional literary skills and a wonderful grasp of the English language in a contemporary context. Coverage includes public health administration, substance abuse, law enforcement, sexual equality, gay rights, personal ambition (in a very American context), religion (there’s a great chapter about a gospel service that is so southern black America – the author was almost seduced by it)!), differences between American and British-English social attitudes (damning about the English class distinctions and divisions, particularly in the RN, where it is worse by persisting so un-necessarily in the twenty-first century!), American life and attitudes (including dialogue, accents and language), and the American work ethic, amongst numerous other topics, all intertwined with relevant references to literature and films, etc. There’s at least one section that brought a lump to my throat, and as for the succinct comparison between Bush snr and Bush jnr, it’s brilliant!

Geoff Dyer is the author of four novels and six other nonfiction books, including But Beautiful, which was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize, and Out of Sheer Rage, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. The winner of a Lannan Literary Award, the International Centre of Photography’s 2006 Infinity Award for writing on photography, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ E. M. Forster Award, Dyer is a regular contributor to many publications in the US and UK. He lives in London.