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Daniel Immerwahr

All articles by this author

We’re the Good Guys, Right?

We’re the Good Guys, Right?

On the Marvel movies

Marvel’s first hit, Iron Man, was released in 2008, just as the surge in Iraq was coming to a close. This marked the end of the hot wars of the Bush years and the transition to a cooler state of continuous half-war, characterized less by boots on the ground than by eyes in the sky. The Obama era revealed that the war on terror would be unlike past wars, with beginnings and ends. It was a way of life rather than a discrete event, a chronic condition rather than an acute one. The war was routinized and, with the dramatic surge in the use of drones, mechanized.

What Did You Do in the War, Doctor?

What Did You Do in the War, Doctor?

On social scientists and social change

The task they faced was enormous. If the First World War had given analysts access to shell-shocked soldiers, the second one introduced the prospect of entire cities traumatized by unrelenting threat. Simply healing the bomb-bruised psyches of the British would have been daunting enough.