Who would have guessed that I was reading the same books Salman Rushdie was reading at about the same time? I am grateful to Kurt Vonnegut for writing the books that so deeply formed my feelings about war and reality. And I am grateful to Rushdie who so vividly reminds me why these books marked me. Rushdie writes, “It tells us that most human beings are not so bad, except for the ones who are, and that’s valuable information. It tells us that human nature is the one great constant of life on earth, and it beautifully and truthfully shows us human nature neither at its best nor at its worst but how it mostly is, most of the time, even when the times are terrible.”