war

Review: GRUNT: THE CURIOUS SCIENCE OF HUMANS AT WAR by Mary Roach
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Review: GRUNT: THE CURIOUS SCIENCE OF HUMANS AT WAR by Mary Roach

Those in the business of National Security classify diarrhea as a clear and present danger. It’s particularly hazardous for members of the U.S. Special forces, because diarrhea is an enemy from within that can attack without warning. I know this because I’ve read Mary Roach’s GRUNT: THE CURIOUS SCIENCE OF HUMANS AT WAR, specifically, chapter eight (“Leaky SEALs”).

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The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week: “How Héctor Vanquished the Greeks” by George Choundas

The relationship between sports and war in American culture is deep; tune in any given Sunday and you’ll find fighter jets flying over the stadium and football jerseys designed with camo. In “How Héctor Vanquished the Greeks” (Harvard Review), George Choundas explores the kinship between war and sport through a youth soccer game woven into…

An unloaded pistol
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Guns and Poems: Why is it (almost) impossible to write a great poem about guns?

Poetry has a history of violence. It was true a few hundred years ago, when bards wrote of knights and of great battles, and it is true today, when poets pick up their pens to write about the trauma of war, abuse, or repression. Whether they abhor it or glorify it, there is something about…