The origin of the Mad Arab is important in many of Lovecraft's stories, often shaded in complete mystery. Tyson's protagonist, although less macabre than I expected him to be, is written as an anti-hero. Tyson's authentic setting descriptions transported me to these ancient locations, which is far more important than whether the protagonist fits my Alhazred ideal or not.

"If you had a population that were miserable and restless because they had nowhere bearable to live, then the preferred solution seemed not to be spending money on improving their condition but on hiring more police in case things should turn ugly, housing these new myrmidons in properties from which the itchy and disgruntled man-herds were already serendipitously purged."

Sacco's note: "I had to assure one editor that the background crosshatching on the second panel of the story's last page was not an effort to slip in a lot of little crucifixes."

I should have known better when the author's preface to the subject is daddy not telling her she is a genius when she feels otherwise. Grit is not developed by degrees of academia but by the omission of the hierarchies described by Maslow. Maybe she meant cracked hominy corn instead.

Like Garth Ennis' Genesis, the spirit offspring of an angel and demon that possessed Jesse Custer in the Preacher comics, Talbot's journey is a hot summer story as told by your favorite rogue uncle on the porch: revealing, concise, and painful. More frightening than any horror story I can think of.

Fountain creates that narrative that feels like you're hearing a story from a batto, but doesn't fall into jargon-world, which is a great balance to achieve for a military writer. It shows he did his army-isms research, oftentimes that crucial niche lacking for writers without an OD background.

As a former guard there the year before Hickman, I can identify with his narrative, even though he guarded the camp rather than one-on-one with detainees. His account delivers a nourishing scoop of ethical collard greens to the usual portions of keep your mouth shut chili mac soldiers are used to.

I had the opportunity to visit Andersonville a few years back. I wish I read the book before the visit. The plot of land was just too small.

It came to me the other day: why not use this in my freshman composition class? The conventions of the ramshackle English department and plummeting interest of literary academia, narrated via LORs and other proposal letters, offer students insight into more that just a typical first-year reader.