A new collection of Bill Ehrhart's essays, 25 of them written between 2002 and 2011 on subjects ranging from the failures of American policymakers during the Vietnam War to life in 21st century Vietnam, from the trenches of the Western Front to the crossing of the Rhine to the mountains of Korea to the sands of Iraq, from the value of one's name to the cowardice of Congress, from mountain gorillas in Rwanda to the National Book Award-winning journalist Gloria Emerson, from teaching poetry to teenagers to luxuriating in a Japanese hot spring spa, on the famous (Wilfred Owen) and the obscure (Robert James Elliott), these essays explore the fallacies of history, the madness of war, the craft of poetry, the profession of teaching, and the art of living.