Before I can ask him a question, Dexter Filkins -- The New York Times correspondent whose new book, The Forever War, recounts experiences from his three years reporting during the Iraq War and his time before that in Afghanistan -- insists on putting one to me. He hates to ask, he says, "but have you read the book?" When we met early one evening in New York City in September, Filkins had just returned from a trip to Iraq to see how things had changed since he left in 2006. I show him my copy of his book, with post-it flags protruding from the edges of the pages, and he seems relieved.