Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

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The Long Walk Home: A Story of War and the Life that Follows

Thu, November 11, 2021
Dinner Program
Brian Castner

Brian Castner, a Bronze Star recipient, served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them in Iraq as the head of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit. Whenever IEDs were discovered, he and his team would lead the way in either disarming the deadly devices or searching through rubble and remains for clues to the bomb-makers’ identities. And when robots and other remote means failed, one technician would suit up and take the Long Walk to disarm the bomb by hand. Returning home to his wife and family, Castner entered an inexorable struggle against the enemy within, which he comes to call the “Crazy.” This thrilling, heartbreaking, stunningly honest memoir alternates between two harrowing realities: the terror, excitement, and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the unshakeable fear, anxiety, and survivor guilt that he—like so many veterans—carries inside.

Photo credit: Joey Campagna

Brian Castner is a nonfiction writer, former Explosive Ordnance Disposal officer, and veteran of the Iraq War. His most recent book is Stampede, a new history of the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush. He is also the bestselling author of Disappointment River, All the Ways We Kill and Die, and the war memoir The Long Walk, which was adapted into an opera and named a New York Times Editor’s Pick and Amazon Best Book of the Year.

His journalism and essays have appeared in the New York Times, WIRED, Esquire, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and on National Public Radio. He is the co-editor of The Road Ahead, a collection of short stories featuring veteran writers, and has twice received grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, to cover the Ebola outbreak in Liberia in 2014, and to paddle the 1200 mile Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean in 2016. In March 2018 he joined Amnesty International as a Senior Crisis Advisor.

Mr. Castner will deliver the 2021 Veterans' Day Lecture to commemorate veterans and to recognize all active service men and women.

Reproduced from briancastner.com/about/

Photo credit: Joey Campagna

Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum

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