Ackerman can be intensely precise about what he did in war. We’ve already seen that with his gloss of his own citation. By setting his scenes off the battlefield, by both showing the moment-by-moment of war as well as by showing its runup, aftermath and fallout, and by using language to describe experiences that torque speech Ackerman writes of his own distinctive and highly personal war, but in a way that is vividly broad and encompassing.
#Reviewing All For You
All For You satisfies the narrative requirements the Smithton readers demand from romance: it provides escape and a happy ending. But that assessment does not capture the full complexity of a novel that has its characters argue over how to provide for and take care of service members, how to prepare for deployment, and how to deal with its aftermath. And it doesn’t capture the full complexity of a novel that does all of that while pointing to dynamics of race, rank, and gender.
(Re)Telling the Story of 9/11: #Reviewing The Only Plane in the Sky
Through its very publication Graff’s book joins an already existing body of writing about 9/11, a corpus to which he is already a significant contributor as author of The Threat Matrix and “We’re the Only Plane in the Sky.” Accounts that dig into what came before 9/11, accounts that unfold the events of that day, accounts of what came after, all carry their own unique virtues and drawbacks, but I am grateful for them all and believe we need all of them because they talk over and next to and alongside one another. Graff’s volume is a crucial addition to writing about 9/11 because of its immersive power and its capacity to plunge the reader back into the day itself.