Brian Castner on 'The Long Walk' to disarm IEDs

'The Long Walk' by Brian Castner
Book cover courtesy of publisher

In "The Long Walk," Brian Castner tells the story of his three tours of duty in the Middle East, spending his days disarming improvised explosive devices and collecting those that had already detonated.

Castner walks readers through the process of suiting up in an 80-pound Kevlar outfit, walking up to a bomb and disarming it by hand.

Castner's book also looks at his struggles transitioning back to civilian life.

"The stakes were all too low suddenly," he said on the public radio program Fresh Air. "Whether I did the dishes or not didn't seem to rise to the challenge of what I had done before. When nothing is important anymore, everything is important. Little things start to become too important and you start to become obsessive over the details. And that obsessive part of my brain that kept me alive in Iraq went into overdrive and it became the hindrance. It got in the way."

Castner joined The Daily Circuit to discuss his book and his experiences at war.

VIDEO: Tavis Smiley talks with Brian Castner

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