Oftentimes, discussion of war gets flattened to a discussion of trauma.

I'm not anti-war. I served in a war, and I served proudly. But just or not, necessary or not, war is the industrial-scale slaughter of other humans.

I didn't want to write a 'this is how it is' Iraq book, because the Iraq War is an intensely complicated variety of things.

The Cold War provided justification for a larger peacetime military, since we were never really at peace, or so the argument went.

I'd been in college studying English creative writing and history when I made the decision to join the Marines in the runup to the Iraq war.

And that was my homecoming. It was fine, I guess. Getting back feels like your first breath after nearly drowning. Even if it hurts, it's good.