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Over the past five years, Jess Ruliffson has traveled across the country interviewing veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, from kitchen tables in Georgia and libraries in New York City to dive bars in Mississippi and back porches in Vermont. Ruliffson shares the stories of men, women, and non-binary people who struggle to reconcile their wartime experiences with their postwar lives. Identity lies at the heart of these stories, as they grapple with their gender, their race, and the brutality they've witnessed and caused.

In this compassionate book, Ruliffson reveals how America's endless entanglement in wars have affected the psyches of the people who wage them. She finds that the real experience of is a far cry from depictions in popular media like Zero Dark Thirty or American Sniper.