Enduring War

stories of what we've learned

Plot

The stories, essays, and poems in this volume concern the effects of war in our time and the shadows they cast, from the Pacific campaigns of World War II to genocide under the Khmer Rouge to hostilities in the Middle East. Soldiers, however, are not in the foreground in most of these works. More often, the writers depict war as a destructive force on the lives of children, women, and civilians, and capture the lasting, complex ways in which innocent individuals and communities are harmed. Works such as those in Enduring War tell the truths that history and politics hide, challenge our ethical reasoning, and deepen our emotional understanding of war and its consequences. Expressed in the diverse voices of Enduring War, these truths become immediate and memorable to us: we see that wars brutalize victors and vanquished alike, thus sowing the seeds for future conflict. Authors include Chester Aaron, Yehuda Amichai, Ayukawa Nobuo, Vladislav Bajac, Ch'oe Yun, Shmuel HaNagid, Leo Litwak, Sharon May, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tamura Ryuichi, David Shulman, and Shahaduz Zaman, Photographs from Darfur by Shinji Salmoraghi and from Sardinia by Ferdinando Scianna.