“At the head of the column trots the fat sergeant-major. It is queer that almost all of the regular sergeant-majors a…
Nonfiction
Fighting Like a Girl Means Not Being a Pussy: Mary Doyle Interviews Kelly Kennedy
It’s never easy to voice suspicions that your boss is out to get you. No matter how you describe it, the accusation s…
New Essay: Axe by M.C. Armstrong
I met a woman on my way to Iraq. Just before I stepped onto the midnight plane to Baghdad, she asked me what should …
Interview With Will Mackin, Author of Bring Out the Dog
Guest Interviewer Peter Molin of Time Now interviews U.S. Navy veteran Will Mackin. Mackin’s work has appeared …
New Memoir by Krystal A. Sital: SECRETS WE KEPT
We are of Trinidad—my grandmother, my mother, and I. Our island is located in the Lesser Antilles of paradise, a dot …
An Interview with Krystal A. Sital, Author of SECRETS WE KEPT
In her debut memoir, Krystal A. Sital paints a vivid picture of life in Trinidad, which to any tourist’s eyes must se…
An Interview with Helen Benedict, Author of WOLF SEASON
Helen Benedict is the author of seven novels, five books of nonfiction, and a play. Her most recent novel, WOLF SEASO…
Blood Money: C.E. Morgan’s ‘The Sport of Kings’
On May 17, 1875, under blue skies and wearing the flapping green-and-orange silks of his legendary employer J.P. McGr…
THE WORDS ON THE INTERNET SAID MICHAEL HERR HAS DIED
Where were you when Michael Herr died in 2016? What were you doing? Did you listen to the opening voiceover of Apocal…
An Interview with Taylor Brown, Author of Gods of Howl Mountain
The Wrath-Bearing Tree (Andria Williams): Taylor Brown is the author of a collection of short stories, In the Season …
New Memoir: Solitaire by Lauren Hough (Part II)
Part II of II I should’ve been more concerned when someone fingered the words “Die Dike” into the dust on my r…
Lady Bird’s Pain
There’s an odd narrative thread in Greta Gerwig’s 2017 Lady Bird. The titular hero lives out her senior year of high …
Interview with Jay Baron Nicorvo
Jay Baron Nicorvo’s novel, The Standard Grand (St. Martin’s Press), was picked for IndieBound’s Ind…
Disrespecting the Troops
Sitting in front of my computer one evening, scrolling idly through Facebook items, a long post catches my eye. As a …
New Memoir: Solitaire by Lauren Hough (Part I)
Part I of II My first time at the closest gay bar to Shaw Air Force Base, the bouncer asked me if I had…
Homage to Veneto
There is no status quo in politics. Things really do fall apart, to quote the overly quoted Yeats. For those of us bo…
Exit West and Dark at the Crossing: Two Novels of Syrian Refugees
It has been a long six and a half years since the Arab Spring, the popular movement of early 2011 that toppled dictat…
Stalin’s Biography: For Serious Readers Only
Diving into an 850-page biography of one of the most monstrous and powerful men who ever lived is not something one d…
On the Subject of Walls
While it’s fallen off the news somewhat, one of Donald Trump’s most conspicuous campaign-trail promises was to build …
In Defense of Writing Modern Epic
At some point during my education, I developed a powerful sense of skepticism toward the Epic. Every literary or cine…
Arms Sales, Cash, and Losing Your Religion
The lucrative Arms Sales market exists in the exact place where rational self-interest intersects with humanist ideal…
John Berger, Max Sebald, Teju Cole: International Men of Culture
I think it was Ousmane Sembene, the Senegalese author and filmmaker, who talked of the writer being the voice of the …
Resistance Dispatches: Foreign and Domestic
Every American soldier takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies. Since I left the ser…
The Dictator Novel in the Age of Trump
“Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-fr…
Such Modest Proposals, And So Many
Most schoolchildren in the English-speaking West read Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal in high school or college. S…
Noble Accounts: American War Stories, American Mothers, and Failed American Dreams
In the social history of our country, the current cultural moment may seem particularly conducive to division, denial…
J.M. Coetzee: The Master of Cape Town
South African-born writer John Coetzee is one of the most decorated and celebrated living writers. He has won the Nob…
1917: Ukraine’s First Bid to be Independent
This February marks the 100 year anniversary of an event that transformed Europe, brought the US into WWI, and nearly…
Sebastian Junger with WBT’s Drew Pham on “Tribe”
How can a society so disconnected from its wars welcome back its fighting women and men? What do we lose when we priv…
Hierarchy and Americans, A Long Love Affair
We have leaders, in the USA, it's always been that way. I don’t believe in some magical, fairyland communal…
The Long March Ahead: A Veteran’s Place in Resistance
The day after the election felt all too familiar. It felt like 9/11. Then, as now, that day only promised a long road…
The Sellout by Paul Beatty: A Review
Shortly after Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Booker Prize was awarded to fellow American Paul Beatt…
Against NATO: The Other Side of the Argument
Since 1989-1991 when every country in the USSR or the Warsaw Pact (save Russia) jumped ship at the earliest oppo…
Why Does the Universe Exist and Other Things We Cannot Know
Philosophy used to be the king of science. Hard to imagine now, but it’s true. Over the last few centuries, how…
Last Week This Week 9-25-16
Wrath /ræθ/ noun 1 : s…
The Italian Front in WWI: Bad Tactics, Worse Leadership, and Pointless Sacrifice
During this ongoing centenary of the First World War, interest in “The War to End All Wars” has returned, especially …
Punk! Last Week This Week: 9/11 Music Edition
On 9/11–Punk, Protest, and Witness: WBT Editors Choose Their Jams There was a chance, in 1991, for the US to ta…
Crazy Horse and the Legacy of the American Indian Genocide
Recent news articles about coal pollution in the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming, and protests against new …
Last Week This Week 8-28-16
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World War Two Never Ended
World War Two never ended. It sounds like the plot of a dystopian science fiction novel, right? Either the bad guys w…
Dunkirk: the Bravest British Retreat
Whatever one might think about the United Kingdom’s recent behavior toward Europe—its antagonism toward the European …
Last Week This Week 6-7-16
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Last Week This Week 7-24-16: Donald Trump Edition
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On Plato, Donald Trump, and the Ship of State
Plato’s most famous work and the foundational text of political philosophy is the Republic. Written in the form…
Last Week This Week: 7-17-16
Wrath /ræθ/ noun 1 : s…
E.O. Wilson on Biology as Politics, Culture, and Human Nature
One of the most illustrious living scientists, E.O. Wilson, is still active and writing great books well into his ninth …
Each Soldier a Thread
The violence that reached our shores left me at a loss—every attempt to conceptualize these tragedies failed to…
The Dangerous Rise and Impending Collapse of Homo Sapiens
“If all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all life on earth would end. If all human…
Last Week This Week: 6-26-16 (Brexit and Michael Herr)
Since the last time we conducted a wrapup, the following has occurred: NATO finished the largest joint exercises in o…
In Laurent Bécue-Renard’s Of Men and War War Is Not Tragic But Embarrassing
In The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell argued that every war is ironic because every war is worse than…