In the Company of War

There were times when Anthony Feinstein would scare the hell out of me. I was worried he had some sort of X-ray vision. We would sit together on panels discussing war journalism, and my fear was that he would see right through me and judge the cumulative effect of my experiences covering combat.

Such was the power of his unobtrusive gaze and, more importantly, his reputation as a neuropsychiatrist. For those of whose business it was to chronicle war, you would have had to have been living under a rock for the past dozen years not to have met him, read his work, or at least been aware of it. That kind of gravitas gets you pretty impressive access to a tight-knit, often-cloistered community of extraordinarily gifted people who’ve been riven by the burdens of repeatedly staring into the savage abyss of modern wars and conflicts. Through him, we are granted admission into this...