Imagine a place where you have to worry about finding clean drinking water, or you have to find firewood because winter is coming and you do not want to freeze to death. Also, when you get sick and get worse because there is no hospital. Sounds bad right? Now imagine that place is an island and you are stuck in between two armies, hell bent on destroying each other. Plus they really do not care what happens to you or your loved ones. Again sounds bad right? Now imagine that island is Manhattan which is the battle site for the new American Civil war. All I have to say is welcome to the DMZ.

The author Brian Wood cleverly show us the new landscape of Manhattan and the world through the eyes of the protagonist Matthew Roth. Roth’s a twenty something photo-journalist who finds himself the first journalist in years to be reporting from the DMZ. Following Roth we find that Central Park is being protected by a group of AWOL commandoes, and the king of Chinatown is the nice old man that lived next to Roth.

Its Roth experiences in the DMZ and with the powers that be on both sides of this war that makes this book special. There is really no evil or no good in this story. Both sides have committed there acts of sins. Whether it be manipulating Roth’s stories or hiring suicide bombers to disrupt relief efforts both sides have proved that they are wiling to do anything to win.

In the end for the people that live in the DMZ it does not matter who wins the wars because they are not apart of it. They keep on taking this abuse from both sides and they still manage to survive and keep on living their lives. Whether its figuring out how to clean water or putting on a concert for the neighborhood. The people in the DMZ have somehow created their own society. That’s what I think the underlining theme of this story is. That no matter what happens human find a way to live