What qualifies you to write a book like this?

As I say in the foreword, positively nothing. I’m just some guy. (Then again, so are nearly all of the talking heads setting the terms of public debate in the United States, sad to say.) It just seemed like a book like this should exist, and as far as I could tell, it didn’t. As to whether the content is credible, that’s your call, of course. But, my occasional fallibility aside (see the errata page for that), you should be able to verify pretty much everything in the book in a couple of Googles.

When were the essays completed?

Generally speaking, about six months before publication, give or take. Which, given the nature of war, is a bit like doing an oil painting of a fireworks display. For high-flux situations like Iraq and Afghanistan, I tried to squeeze in updates as late as possible in the process. (My editor can tell you how much extra work I kept making for him.) But even those had a lead time of months. Still, as I write this on the eve of publication, as far as I can tell, most of the thing holds up pretty darn well. Much better than I expected, to be honest.

Why isn’t [insert your favorite civil war / insurrection / international stand-off here] included?

Believe it or not, my publisher originally wanted the book to be only 30,000 words long. Which was, of course, impossible. As it is, most of the essays are short enough to read on the can, which seems a bit unjust, given that we’re often describing situations in which countless nice human beings have lost their lives. The risk of trivializing anything haunted me every waking minute while writing this thing. Ultimately, we convinced the kind publisher to extend my word and page limit up by about fifty percent (which costs money out of their pocket, mind you), and then I spent most of the month of March 2007 cutting and slashing every spare word, and in a few cases, entire chapters.