We are at war.

How many times have you written off the guy at the office who keeps coming to your desk with the latest copy of Soldier of Fortune magazine and berating you for dismissing everyone on the Right as a paranoid gun nut? You're probably right to dismiss them, and to be skeptical of their claim about our current political state relative to peace. You're probably also right to dismiss the BMW-driving yuppie IT-exec whose very favorite thing is getting fired up with a Starbuck's for his next meeting, because, "as we all know by now, the real war is being waged in the boardroom, so that's why you were passed over for a promotion--these meetings aren't boring and irrelevant...you're just not paying attention...." Yeah, you're probably right to dismiss them.

But they may not be wrong in their claim that we are at war. In fact, we are in the same war we have been in since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Sadly, you can be relieved from the unending burden of denial in the face of idiotic brutality and complicity. Furthermore, if you have dismissed the management team and the office vigilante who've gotten rich and happy fighting from the comfort of their suburban video game room in the company of their co-conspirators—the rest of your so-called colleagues and associates who won't invite you to Christmas parties anymore—you are probably on the right side of it. In "The War of The World," Rebbecca Solnit provides an instructive and engaging explanation of what your paranoid, manic office mates are going on about, but in a tone much more appropriate to the tragic choice of war and our undeniable place in it, whether we like it or not.