• In a post in the Foreign Policy blog, The Best Defense, just named None of Us Were Like This Before as one of the “Top 10 books on U.S. interrogation.”  Click here to read the post.

• Phillips produced an article for The Atlantic, titled “The Real Legacy of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Will Be in Interrogation Rooms” — a story about the legacy that the film might create, and that expands material from the book.  Click here to read the article.

• HuffPost Live featured Phillips and the book on a web show about the effects of detainee abuse and torture on US soldiers.  Click here to view the segment.

• The Guardian included None of Us Were Like This Before as one one of their readers’ favorite books of 2012.  Click here to read the article.

• Author Thomas Ricks featured the book in his Foreign Policy blog, The Best Defense.  Click here to read the post.

• The Independent published a review of the paperback edition, writing that ”Phillips argues persuasively that widespread prisoner abuse, while not always official policy, has been enabled by the willful blindness of senior military figures, and shows that torture is not just a moral outrage, but also a self-defeating practice that exacts a huge psychological toll on those who inflict it…  Phillips’ razor-sharp book cuts into…euphemisms to reveal the ugly truths they disguise.”  Click here to read the review.

• The television show Today’s Verdict produced an interview with Phillips about the book.  Click here to watch the video.

• Phillips published the article “Talking torture in Tampere and Tacoma” for Latitude News about how disperate audience respond to the book, and Phillips’ talks about it, in the U.S. and overseas.

• The Nation Institute’s Backstory just produced an interview about the “Inside the Detainee Task Force” article, published in The Nation magazine (May 30, 2011 edition) — a story that expands upon a chapter in the book. Click here to listen to the interview (and read the webpage), and here to read the article.

• TruthOut just produced a web video about None of Us Were Like This Before.  Click here to see the webpage, or play the video below.

• The Seattle / KUOW show, Weekday, interviewed Phillips about the book and veterans issues.  Click here to listen to the full interview, and here to see the web post about the program.

• The Finnish paper Kansan Uutiset produced an article about the book and the enduring legacy of of prisoner abuse, its impact on veterans, and the ongoing impunity for torture.  Click here to read the article (in Finnish).

• The Swedish paper Arbetaren Zenit just published a long feature and Q&A about the None of Us Were Like This Before.  Click here to read the article (in Swedish).

• The Finnish News Agency (STT) produced an article about the book and Phillips’s investigative reporting on prisoner abuse and torture.  Click here to read the article (in Finnish).

• Voices of Our World produced a powerful radio interview, and a short video clip, about the book. Click here to listen to the radio feature and here to view the video short.

• Gulf News published a great review about None of Us Were Like This Before, and profile about Phillips’s journey producing the book. Alice Johnson writes that the book is a “brave journalistic examination… Written and researched over a period of five years, None of Us Were Like This Before took Phillips to [the Middle East] and Afghanistan to undertake first-hand reporting. An important, shocking book that takes a fresh, in-depth look at how and why detainee abuse was carried out by American forces abroad.” Click here to read the review, and here to read the profile.

• Talking of Books, a UAE-based radio show, broadcast an interview with Phillips about None of Us Were Like This Before. Click here to listen to the interview.

• The New Left Project published an excellent in-depth interview about the book.  Click here to read Part I, and here to read Part II.

• “Inside the Detainee Abuse Task Force”

Phillips produced an investigative article for The Nation magazine, titled “Inside the Detainee Task Force” (the May 30, 2011 edition) — a story that expands upon a chapter in the book.  Click here to read the article.

This investigation was also the focus of a feature for the PBS show, Need to Know, in a segment titled “Look No Further: The military’s detainee abuse investigation task force”  (broadcast on May 13, 2011 and rebroadcast on August 12, 2011).

Play the clip below to watch the video.

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

• Firedoglake produced a wide-ranging interview about The Nation and PBS features on the Detainee Abuse Task Force for their podcast show, “This Week in WikiLeaks.” Listen to Part I of the interview here and Part II here, and read the Part I of the transcript here and Part II here.

• AntiWar Radio produced a great interview about The Nation and PBS features.  Click here to listen to the interview.

• WikiLeaks Central calls The Nation article “great investigative journalism.”  Click here to read the post.  Other blogs have posted similar write ups about The Nation and PBS features, namely: AllGov, Firedoglake, Afghanistan 101, and FreeDetainees.

• Scott Horton posted a generous write up about The Nation investigation for his “No Comment” / Harper’s magazine blog.  Click here to read the post.

• The Jeff Santos Radio Show interviewed Phillips about The Nation article and the PBS Need to Know feature.  Click here to listen to the interview.

• The Chicago-based radio show, “This is Hell” on WNUR  89.3 FM, broadcast a radio interview about the book, and Phillips’s recent article in The Nation. Click here to listen to the interview.

• CBS News quoted Phillips in an article titled “Rejockeying to Win the Torture Debate.”  Click here to read the article.

• Phillips recently gave an interview about the book, and the recent discussion about torture, for WNPR’s The Faith Middleton Show.  Click here to listen to the interview.

• Veterans for Common Sense produced an excellent review about the book saying, “Phillips’ book remains the first and best heartbreaking tale not only of the abuses taking place within our military prisons, but also the negative, long term and in many cases fatal psychological effects it is having on both interrogating soldiers and interrogated enemy prisoners of war.  This book gets a top rating because of the valuable facts about torture collected from invaluable sources. The material is urgent and profound.  This book should become an necessary read for all, as well as an essential tool for mental health professionals seeking to aid soldiers and veterans as well as survivors.”  Click here to read the full review.

• FOX 34 produced a television spot and article about the book, and Phillips’ appearance at Texas Tech University’s “Conference on Torture.”  Click here to read the article and view the video clip.

• New America Now / New America Media produced a great interview about the book, and broadcast it on KALW in San Francisco on March 11, 2011.  Click here to listen to the podcast.

• KZBK and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle produced a terrific interview and article about the book and Phillips’s talks in Bozeman, MT.  Click here to view the interview and here to read the article.

• Gulf News published a great interview about the book, writing that it is “a fascinating yet distressing account of how the use of torture and abusive techniques on prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan affected the lives of American soldiers who found themselves caught up in it.”  Click here to read the interview.

• The Belfast Telegraph’s Eamonn McCann just selected None of Us Were Like Before as one of his top five books of the year, writing that the book is “is a tour de force of investigative journalism…a vivid account.” Click here to read the full column.

• Guernica magazine published a very generous Q&A and write up about the book, saying None of Us Were Like This Before is “a masterwork of narrative nonfiction.”  Click here to read the full article or click here to read a shorter excerpt of the interview published by the Overseas Press Club of America.

• The London Review of Books published a long, rave review about the book, writing, “Phillips shows that the recourse to blaming a ‘few bad apples’ should be recognised as a disgraceful, face-saving fiction.” Click here to read the full review (subscription required).

• Phillips gave another compelling interview about the book for WNPR’s The Faith Middleton Show.  Click here to listen to the interview.

• The Independent published a great review of the book, writing “This is an important book showing the damage abuse does to the torturers as well as to their victims…Phillips’s message is that we most need the rules banning torture when we most want to break them.”   Click here to read the full review.

• Counterfire published a terrific review of the book.  To quote the reviewer “the causes and consequences of systematic abuse and torture are all explored by Joshua Phillips through a careful but searing narrative.”  Click here to read the full review.

• The Danish Broadcasting Corporation (the Danish version of NPR or BBC) broadcast an interview about the book, and a Danish version of the radio documentary, What Killed Sergeant Gray.  Click here to listen to the interview and documentary (in Danish) and here to visit the webpage.

• Counterfire published five extracts of the book on its website. Click here to read a section from the Introduction, and excerpts from Chapter 2 here, here,  here, and here.

• In October, Phillips gave two fascinating interviews about the book for American Radio Works, and the internationally-broadcast BBC World Service Update.

Please visit the EVENTS and REVIEWS pages for more interviews, author appearances, and book reviews.

It seems each day brings heartbreaking news of American soldiers who’ve perished on the battlefield, and veterans who’ve taken their own lives. We tend to associate wartime trauma with combat, such as bloody firefights. But there are other grueling wartime events beyond the battlefield.

President Barack Obama recognized this last month when he extended veterans’ access for treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I’ve met enough veterans to know that you don’t have to engage in a firefight to endure the trauma of war,” said Obama.

That makes two of us.

Read the full WashingtonPost.com article here:

Award-winning author and noted torture expert Darius Rejali selected None of Us Were Like This Before as one of the top books on violence for FiveBooks.com, writing that “it is a really important book on atrocity-related trauma and the blow-back effect from Iraq … There are many things in this book that are fascinating and generally unknown.”

Read the full article here.

“This shattering book is a journey into the heart of American darkness. What Joshua Phillips makes shockingly clear is that the misbehavior of some of our best soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan came about because of a failure of military leadership and because political leaders lacked the courage to admit the word ‘torture.’”                                                                           —Richard Rodriguez, author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America

Two stark sentences wedged in the center of a military document curtly summarized the demise of a 24-year-old soldier: “SGT Gray was found dead in his barracks room at 1921 hrs on 29 August 2004. Subsequent investigation by CID (Exhibit 5) found that his death was accidental.” An autopsy report provided a few more details about the soldier: “He spoke at length of many positive experiences in Iraq, such as rebuilding schools and eating with Iraqis. However, he also made reference to events that bothered him and that he could not speak…about.” NONE OF US WERE LIKE THIS BEFORE (Verso Books, dist by W.W. Norton; Pub Date: June 10, 2010; $26.95 HC) is a brave investigation of what many returning US soldiers cannot speak about: the shattering legacy of torture on veterans who have seen or participated in detainee abuse.

Joshua Phillips, a seasoned journalist, began reporting for a book on interrogation but quickly changed focus after meeting Sergeant Gray’s family. Gray had been full of life, and looked forward to fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming a soldier. But he was a different person when he returned from Iraq. Silent and self-destructive, he hinted at a series of events that he could not speak about. In August 2004 Gray was found dead in his room. In investigating his death Phillips was led to speak with members of Gray’s Army unit, and heard disturbing stories about returning soldiers who had struggled to live with what they had done. Perhaps most affecting was the testimony of Jonathan Millantz, a friend of Gray’s and someone who was tormented by memories of his time in the war. In April 2009, after months of telling friends and family that he was “soldiering on,” Millantz’s family found him in his room, dead of an overdose that was reminiscent of Gray’s.

Most former participants in abuse are unwilling to admit what they have done. But based on first-hand reporting from the Middle East and years of working with ordinary soldiers, Phillips has collected a shattering record of the impact of current enhanced interrogation techniques on American veterans.  Perhaps most surprisingly, Gray’s story reveals that it is not only CIA agents or prison guards in now-infamous sites like Abu Ghraib who participate in abuse, but ordinary soldiers who never expected to engage in interrogation and torture, or to pay the psychological price for it.

Joshua Phillips is available for interview. For interviews & review copies send an email to: contact@noneofuswerelikethisbefore.com