The interviewer asks him about the people he got to know along the way. Some of the soldiers saw Clay as a confidant. One woman revealed that she’d been sexually assaulted by a superior. She reported the assault, but nothing happened, despite having a witness to back up her claims. Six months later, her superior was demoted—for stealing a cell phone. Another soldier on his second tour said he was almost glad to be back. He wasn’t himself at home anymore, feeling too restless and anxious to be with his girlfriend. But he reported none of it, for fear of being classified as unfit to serve.

I’m pretty sure I’m unfit to do anything else, though, he had told Clay.

Adam slides into the empty chair beside me. He takes the book out of my hands, scans the back cover, and hands it back to me.

“Thank you for taking my question,” a woman says, her mouth too close to the microphone. From where we’re sitting, six rows back, I can see only a mop of curly hair. “Can you talk about what made you want to see this war up close?”

She lingers with the microphone in her hand until the interviewer signals for her to place it back into its stand.

“The thing is . . .” Clay says, shifting in his seat as he gathers his thoughts. He’s wearing a black sports jacket over a heather-gray T-shirt. His angular face is shadowed with a two-day stubble. He has dark eyes, softened by lines. He looks old enough to be seasoned but young enough to have more to accomplish.

“I think there are some of us who can’t look away. We keep trying to make sense of it all. Let’s be real. History books are sanitized, abbreviated versions of the story. One guy assumes power, another guy loses it. But the soldiers and civilians are living this war and suffering the losses. I write about the husband who goes back to his wife in Michigan in a flag-draped casket and the Afghan children shot down during an American airstrike.”

The room is chastened, uncomfortable. Adam shakes his head, and I’m not sure if he’s taken umbrage with the child casualties or with Clay’s cynicism.

“Don’t you think we’ve done enough to clean up these third world countries?” a shaggy-haired man in a white T-shirt asks. I wonder if he came here for this talk or joined in on his way to browse the magazines. “We took the Taliban out for them. They should be responsible for fixing their own problems now.”

Clay exhales slowly, as if he’s answered this question a few times too many.

“I get the fatigue,” he says. “I really do. But it’s complicated.”

I don’t walk up to the mic. I don’t even bother to raise my hand.

“We created the third world,” I blurt.