Afghanistan: On the Bounce

This beautiful coffee table war book, Afghanistan on the Bounce, is a photographic essay within the heart of the Afghanistan war. It’s filled with color photographs large and small, from full-page to thumbnail prints. Author Robert Cunningham was embedded with American troops with his camera to record all aspects of the brutal war. The photographs are technically nice, but they are not much more than good snapshots, divided by subjects into many chapters. Many of the photos are unlabeled—a mistake as most of us are curious about their meanings. Those labeled are often technical regarding weaponry, mostly of interest to war buffs. Every chapter is introduced by a one-page description. These are not easy to read—they are filled with military jargon and acronyms and it takes readers some searching to find their meanings. Short, scattered sidebars resembling torn-out pages of note books are not very informative and difficult to read because of the poorly chosen font and small font size. It seems that this book was produced as a fancy memento targeting troops. Small, several page long pamphlets are included here and there, glued to pages—an error, as some of them are already unglued in a brand new book.