Introduction The second and third blasts lit up my hotel room in a pink-orange hue. Three more blasts, unmistakable, echoed and cracked. Counterattack? For the previous hour, in a fourth-floor room at the Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, I graded...

At age twelve I was fond of telling stories about my father’s service in Vietnam, even though he, my father, never talked about it. The briefest windows I got into this past were when he’d glaze over and mouth the words to Billy Joel’s “Goodnight Saigon” while driving...