Introduction
This chapter begins the book by considering the knowledge on war that a seemingly unrelated abstract painting can harbor. That relationship introduces readers to the major theme of war authority as a decentralized and multilocated phenomenon. Background overviews provide information on America’s two wars studied here—in Vietnam and Iraq—the rise of militarism in the United States after the Vietnam War, and the heroization of soldiers today. The research sites for the study come into view along with the concepts that frame the study, including war as experience, memory, curation, and material objects as bearers of curator-coordinated war knowledge. The key argument to be sustained throughout the book is: war is experiential injurious politics that produces numerous sites of war expertise, many of which are overpowered by stories that gain truth through technical dominance, repetition and practice.