No matter what we think we are achieving, eventually, imperial wars come home to roost. A generation of men asked to watch children suffer without flinching return to America. The ethics of the wars of Pax Americana become the ways and mores in our own streets. The logic of the war in Afghanistan is transferred to the classrooms of Chicago's public high schools. America is reborn in a shape we never intended. A series of short stories and vignettes walk the reader through the consequences of two decades of war, and the attitudes it creates. An eighteen year old realizes his mortality and is punished for it by his peers; a soldier returns from the wars only to realize he's teaching the colonized in his own city; a young couple go to Central America and see the effects of the West on class and opportunity; members of a platoon hunt to find a traitorous Afghan spy; and a man spends his days adhering to a strict