#x1C;This strange, enthralling book on twentieth-century war reenactors becomes a wonderful case study on the power of history in our lives: history as a sort of Grail quest, history as fetish, history as reality itself. Thompson's reporting on these quarrelsome and oddly self-loathing people is exhaustive. Her analyses of the meaning of memory to them and, ultimately, to all of us, have a subtle precision that recalls the methodology of Proust.#x1D;-Henry Allen, author of What It Felt Like-Living in the American Century and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism #x1C;Thompson writes with the eye of an ethnographer, the ear of a novelist, and the voice of a pop singer with a feel for a groove. War Games showcases a bona fide democratic approach to history-with all that implies. Along the way, we're reminded how much our notions of the past inform the way we live now.#x1D;-Jim Cullen, author of The Civil War in Popular Culture and The American Dream #x1C;Exciting, valuable, and engaging, Thompson takes us inside the disturbing world of war reenactment and explores the important questions it raises about war, history, memory, gender, authenticity, and imagination.#x1D;-John L.

Caughley, professor of American studies, University of Maryland, and author of Imaginary Social Worlds: A Cultural Approach #x1C;Jenny Thompson makes you laugh and makes you cry. She shows us the whole that is America: ordinary men who lead partial lives where their emotional emptiness is met through camaraderie in playing army. An empty America is the result.#x1D;-Mark Leone, professor of anthropology, University of Maryland, and author of Invisible America, with Neil A. Silberman #x1C;Donning uniforms and fully participating in several war reenactments, Thompson brings us all the chaos, noise, pain, exhaustion, fear, and adrenaline rush of close combat in a recreated war.#x1D;-Jay Mechling, professor of American studies, University of California, Davis, and author of On My Honor: Boy Scouts and the Making of American Youth.