From Success, general knowledge: Stanley McChrystal believes the ideas that transformed America’s military can help all organizations. Jennifer Senior reviews How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon by Rosa Brooks. John Bonazzo reviews Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Mary Roach (and more). The few, the proud, the fit: Women strive for combat jobs. The high pressure, loneliness, and constant uncertainty of life as a military wife: Elissa Strauss interviews Rachel Starnes, author of The War at Home: A Wife’s Search for Peace (and Other Missions Impossible). Veterans usually make the news in one of two ways: They’re found dead under a bridge after battles with homelessness or addiction, or they run for office off the strength of their glittering resumes — but the reality faced by many veterans is that they get lost to obscurity and sometimes struggle to find an identity beyond their completed service.
Federica Caso (Queensland): Sexing the Disabled Veteran: The Homoerotic Aesthetics of Militarism. Looking to the future, as the military grows to incorporate full benefits to same-sex couples on base and more inclusion of women in combat roles, could the next generation of Military-Americans actually become the country’s most accepting of diversity? Modern egalitarian cultures can’t stomach the idea of military glory: Mark Lee Greenblatt reviews The Heroic Heart: Greatness Ancient and Modern by Tod Lindberg. Barry Lee Clark on the moral underpinnings of the military profession. Matti Friedman on the peculiar language of soldiers: What jargon says about armies, and the societies they serve.
