Jackson R. Brooks 📚🎥

It’s been concerning to see how a lot of the main mags and outlets are just peddling Trumpian bullshit.

And, according to Haaretz, there’s been an uptick in suicides among former and active Israeli soldiers. Moral injury tends to skyrocket when the only “enemy” you’re fighting are unarmed men, women, and children.

This reporting pairs well with that book Seth Harp wrote recently (WHICH WAS EXCELLENT). Have you read that yet?

Nine Bodies Turned Up at a Green Beret Outpost. What Really Happened?

Speaking of war crimes, this new story by Matt Aikins about a 3rd SF Group A-team, its Afghan proxies, and the “Nerkh Nine” prisoners they murdered is extremely thoroughly reported. Matt first covered this case in 2013 and has spent the last 4 years digging back in. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/m...

A year today since Evan Wright took his own life. Please go out and read something he wrote this week—GENERATION KILL, or his expose about a senior CIA counterterrorism official HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER IN AMERICA, or HELLA NATION, a collection of his eclectic pre-2003 reporting.

“I have documented serious cases of torture, including mock executions, all types of beatings, electricity being applied to ears and genitals and other parts of the body…Look, I’m calling this part of Russian war policy. It’s clear that it’s organized.”

www.washingtonpost.com/world/intera...

Reminds me of the end of your novel!

“After reports of two major strikes against targets inside Yemen, officials at U.S. Central Command are refusing to discuss whether either action resulted in multiple civilian casualties or if either strike was militarily justified”

www.military.com/daily-news/2...

"they view"

The title of my novel + opening epigraphs!

I’d recommend giving his work another shot. Also, he’s a very humble man.

I’ve read 2 on that list; The Dying Grass and Cloudsplitter are both bangers!

The Dying Grass is a masterpiece!

SACRAMENTO NOIR IS OUT NOW! www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/sacr...

Hardly say he’s tedious, his 2015 novel The Dying Grass is enthralling!

A banner day for American letters! Arcade Publishing will be releasing William T. Vollmann’s Cold War-GWOT-Lonely Man masterwork A TABLE FOR FORTUNE in four volumes in 2026!

William T. Vollmann's A Table for Fortune is getting published by Arcade Publishing

Starting off the year with a double-header; I’ve never read more than one book at a time, so I’m curious to see how this experiment unfolds. More importantly, I’m just super excited to read Denis Johnson again AND jump into my 1st Jim Harrison work

Trump’s cabinet shall from here on be known as the Jackass Brigade. They are the stupidest bunch to come along in all of American history.

‘He has come out an old man’: joy and grief as loved ones released from Assad prisons Family members describe renewed hopes after decades-long searches for political detainees in ‘Kingdom of Silence’ Moammar Ali has been searching for his older brother for 39 years. In 1986, Syrian soldiers arrested the university student Ali Hassan…

‘He has come out an old man’: joy and grief as loved ones released from Assad prisons

What’s particularly galling about much of her work, as the article makes clear, is that so much of it was less deliberate ponderances of familial dynamics and more labored self-justification on her part. How can you choose some pedophilic cocksucker over your own child? Nasty bitch

Munro was an utter failure as a mother and as a human being. I have not read anything by her since these revelations. And I never will.

Gotta concur with ya

Happy belated Birthday Mr. Boyle! I recently came across your second mega volume of short stories and have become fascinated by your writing.

These came in the mail 😍

This. Again, the US wants to blame others for the crises we cause.

“So many of them had been unwilling to share the world with one another—they had rather die—but after all, they had not left the world; they were still here, unseen among the living, the Invisible Ones, les Morts et les Mystères, and now, if for this moment only, they seemed disposed to harmony.”

My new book, THE MISSION: The CIA in the 21st Century, is done. Now writing an epilogue: what's to come. It'll be the most dangerous era since 9/11. A director of national intelligence in thrall to Putin. A nakedly political CIA chief. A president who'll be a dictator on day one. Buckle up, America.

Get to know your mutuals: In no particular order, post 10 things you like

Books
Movies
David Zaslav hate posts
William T. Vollmann
Anything with the word “cocksucker in it”
Martin Scorsese
James Ellroy
History
Animals
CCR