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Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body

By: Lyle Jeremy Rubin
Narrated by: Garrett Michael Brown, Lyle Jeremy Rubin
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Publisher's summary

An honest reckoning with the war on terror, masculinity, and the violence of American hegemony abroad, at home, and on the psyche, from a veteran whose convictions came undone

When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the “war on terror” was necessary to national security. He also subscribed to a strict code of manhood that military service conjured and perpetuated. Then he began to train and his worldview shattered. Honorably discharged five years later, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his beliefs, about himself or his country, intact.

In Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body, Rubin narrates his own undoing, the profound disillusionment that took hold of him on bases in the U.S. and Afghanistan. He both examines his own failings as a participant in a prescribed masculinity and the failings of American empire, examining the racialized and class hierarchies and culture of conquest that constitute the machinery of U.S. imperialism. The result is a searing analysis and the story of one man’s personal and political conversion, told in beautiful prose by an essayist, historian, and veteran transformed.

©2022 Lyle Jeremy Rubin (P)2022 Bold Type Books
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What listeners say about Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body

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Honest, intelligent, and accurate

As a former Marine, I can say that Rubin nails it. He offers brilliant description of Marine Corps culture and the culture of masculinity that runs through it. Unlike so many other veteran memoirs, Rubin doesn't take any assumptions for granted. He guides us through a rigorous interrogation of the belief system that lead him to the Corps and to war. There are no tough-guy battle scenes, here. No self-congratulatory, triumphalist retelling of victories. It's just an honest interrogation of the beliefs that brought so many of us to war.

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Good story!

Loved the details of Lyle’s evolution and his emergence from the brainwashing he grew up with.

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