Esquire and Byliner Publish WAR
The Eighty Greatest Esquire Stories of All Time, Volume 2
March 28, 2013—New York and San Francisco— Men have always fought. And like few other magazines, Esquire has always chronicled war. Published today, War: The Eighty Greatest Esquire Stories of All Time, Volume 2, is an e-book collaboration between the new digital publisher Byliner and Esquire.
This second volume of Esquire’s eightieth-anniversary anthology series collects eight of the magazine’s finest war stories. There is John Sack’s 33,000-word New Journalism opus “M,” which follows in shocking and compassionate detail a single Army company from Fort Dix to South Vietnam, next to Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Caputo’s enthralling account from 1980 of sneaking into Afghanistan during the Russian occupation (“A Rumor of Resistance”). Colby Buzzell’s hilarious, devastating memoir of serving as a gunner in Iraq (“The Making of the Twenty-First-Century Soldier”) leads into Lieutenant J. K. Taussig’s astonishing first-person report of being bombarded on the USS Nevada, in “My Crew at Pearl Harbor”—a definitive story that hasn’t been seen in sixty years.
Next come Brian Mockenhaupt sitting bedside with a fellow soldier whose skull was blown apart in Baghdad (“Sgt. Wells’s New Skull”) and Michael Herr, writing from deep in the Vietnamese jungle after the Tet Offensive. His 1966 story “Hell Sucks” would form the foundation of the now-classic book Dispatches. On its heels comes Chris Jones’s National Magazine Award–winning story “The Things That Carried Him,” which follows in precise, vivid detail one soldier’s journey from the dusty Iraqi desert where he was killed to the Indiana cemetery where his body now rests. The volume concludes with William Broyles Jr.’s 1984 classic “Why Men Love War,” about why he’ll never feel as alive as he did while fighting and watching others die—and scream and cry and kill—in Vietnam.
These eight unforgettable stories, all brutal in the horror, fear, madness, and even beauty they reveal about war, remain as timeless and riveting as the day they were first published.
About Esquire: Esquire, published by Hearst Magazines, is a general-interest magazine for men. Founded in 1933, Esquire offers pieces on diverse topics from politics and sports to style and the arts. Esquire is the most honored monthly magazine in America, with a total of sixteen National Magazine Awards over the past fifteen years. In addition to its U.S. flagship, Esquire publishes twenty-two editions around the world.
About Byliner: Byliner commissions and publishes original stories written to be read in a single sitting. These “e-short” stories are available on phone, tablet, or computer as part of the Byliner subscription service, and can also be purchased individually through the major digital bookstores. Bestselling Byliner titles include Richard Russo’s Nate in Venice, Amy Tan’s Rules for Virgins, Margaret Atwood’s Positron, Jon Krakauer’s Three Cups of Deceit, Ann Patchett’s The Getaway Car, Nick Hornby’s Everyone’s Reading Bastard, and Sebastian Junger’s A World Made of Blood. On Byliner.com, readers get personalized access to an unmatched library of more than 20,000 fiction and nonfiction stories by the world’s best writers, allowing them to easily find, read, save, and share new and classic stories by their favorite authors.
War is available in the new Byliner Premium subscription reading service, or for $3.99 at Amazon’s Kindle Store, Apple’s iBookstore, BarnesAndNoble.com, and Kobo. It is also available at Esquire.com/80stories. To read an excerpt, visit Byliner.com. For an Advance Reading Copy or to schedule an interview, please contact Clare Hertel at clare@byliner.com, 505-474-6783; or Stephanie Tuck at Stephanie_Tuck@dkcnews.com, 212-981-5170.
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