Veteran Activism and the Global War on Terror: Post-9/11 Narratives of Dissent and American War Literature

“Written from the double perspective of someone with academic expertise who also worked as an American journalist embedded with Joint Special Operations Forces in Iraq, M.C. Armstrong  offers fascinating insights into how American military veterans came to reconceptualize ideas of patriotic duty and homeland after 9/11. Starting with the famous case of Edward Snowden but also ranging across fiction writers such as Elliot Ackerman and Kevin Powers, Armstrong provides a compelling account of how these ‘veteran-activists’ engaged with a new era of ‘disidentity politics’ where the old markers of allegiance were no so conceptually secure. This provocative book should provide food for thought and controversy not only in academic circles but also the wider public sphere.” —Paul Giles, Professor of English, Australia Catholic University, Melbourne, and author of The Global Remapping of American Literature