The Burchfield Penney Art Center book club will review a nonfiction work by local Iraq War veteran and author Brian Castner at its next monthly meeting from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Jan. 12 at the center, 1300 Elmwood Ave.
Castner, a graduate of Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisc., is the author of "All the Ways We Kill and Die: An Elegy for a Fallen Comrade, and the Hunt for His Killer." Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East as an officer of the U.S. Air Force. On two of those tours, he was the head of an Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit in Iraq. In 2006, he received a Bronze Star for his service and upon returning to the U.S., he consulted as an independent civilian contractor, training military EOD units on tactical bomb-disposal procedures prior to their deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.
In his nonfiction thriller, Castner learns that his friend and EOD brother, Matt, has been killed by an Improvised Explosive Device in Afghanistan and he goes to console the man's widow. As Castner conducts his own personal investigation, he takes the reader inside the manhunt for this elusive bomb maker. Castner also meets with maimed survivors, interviews the forensics team members who gather post-blast evidence, and those who collect intelligence. Castner's investigation reveals how warfare has changed since the Iraq War, becoming more hi-tech, with drones, bomb disposal robots and Crime Scene Investigation-like techniques.
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