BRIAN CASTNER is the author of Disappointment River, All the Ways We Kill and Die, and the war memoir The Long Walk, which was adapted into an opera. A former Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer and veteran of the Iraq War, his journalism and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Esquire, and on NPR. He is a two-time grantee of the Pulitzer Center, and is the co-editor of The Road Ahead: Stories from the Forever War.