ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book could not exist without the work of a large group of people who have been incredibly generous with their time. Foremost are the people who read and gave me extensive feedback on every story and as such have had a tremendous influence on the shape of this book. I generally gave early drafts to Christopher Robinson, then to Lauren Holmes and Roy Scranton. After they’d finished, I’d send newer versions to Patrick Blanchfield and my wife, Jessica Alvarez. And then finally it went to my incredible editor at The Penguin Press, Andrea Walker, who had a fine-tuned sense for what I wanted to accomplish. These stories would not be worth reading without all of their intelligence and insight.
I also received intensely valuable input, be it through editing stories or helping with technical details or simply through sharing war stories, from Ellah Allfrey, Carmiel Banasky, Vincent Biagi, S J, Anna Bierhaus, Peter Carey, Kevin Carmody, Bill Cheng, Scott Cheshire, John Davis, Alex Derichemont, Wayne Edmiston, Nathan Englander, Eric Fair, Matt Gallagher, Michael Green, Thomas Griffith, Jonathan Gurfein, Jason Hansman, Josh Hauser, Ryan-Daniel Healy, David Imbert, Mariette Kalinowski, Andrew Kalwitz, Gavin Kovite, Molly Wallace Kovite, Jess Lacher, Christopher Lindahl, Matt Mellina, Colum McCann, Patrick McGrath, Perry O’Brien, Evan Pettyjohn, Virginia Ramadan, Adam Schein, Carl Schillhammer, Jacob Siegel, Jeremy Warneke, Matt Weiss, and others.
I am deeply indebted to the Hunter MFA program, without which I would be a much weaker writer. Thanks to everyone I met there, students and faculty, and to Susan Hertog, whose Hertog Fellowship provided funds while I was working on this book.
The other major influence on this book was the NYU Veterans Writing Workshop, which was created by Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith and NYU, and which provided an invaluable space for me to interact with other veteran writers. Thanks to everyone involved, especially Deborah Landau, Zachary Sussman, Sativa January, Brian Trimboli, Emily Brandt, Craig Moreau, and the Disabled American Veterans Charitable Service Trust.
I’d like to thank John Freeman, who gave me my first opportunity to publish a short story.
Thanks to my agent, Eric Simonoff, and to everybody at WME—Claudia Ballard, Cathryn Summerhayes, Laura Bonner, and others.
Thanks to Tom Sleigh, who has helped guide my writing life since I first met him ten years ago at Dartmouth College.
Thanks to my parents and to my brothers—Byrne, Ben, Jon, and Dave. And of course, thanks to the aunties—Aunt Mimi, Aunt Pixie, and the late and dearly missed Aunt Boo.
The writing of this book required a lot of research, and below are some of the books I consulted:
David Abrams’s Fobbit, Giorgio Agamben’s The Open, Omnia Amin and Rick London’s translations of Ahmed Abdel Muti Hijazi’s poetry, Peter Van Buren’s We Meant Well, Donovan Campbell’s Joker One, C. J. Chivers’s The Gun, Seth Connor’s Boredom by Day, Death by Night, Daniel Danelo’s Blood Stripes, Kimberly Dozier’s Breathing the Fire, Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, Siobhan Fallon’s You Know When the Men Are Gone, Nathaniel Fick’s One Bullet Away, Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War, David Finkel’s The Good Soldiers, Jim Frederick’s Black Hearts, Matt Gallagher’s Kaboom, Jessica Goodell’s Shade It Black, J. Glenn Gray’s The Warriors, Dave Grossman’s On Killing and On Combat, Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery, Kirsten Holmstedt’s Band of Sisters, Karl Marlantes’s Matterhorn, Colum McCann’s Dancer, Patrick McGrath’s Trauma, Jonathan Shay’s Odysseus in America and Achilles in Vietnam, Roy Scranton’s essays and fiction, the Special Inspector for Iraq Reconstruction Report Hard Lessons, Bing West’s The Strongest Tribe and No True Glory, Kayla Williams’s Love My Rifle More Than You.