In the Summer of 2018, Warren Stoddard II traveled to Syria, a country embroiled in a nearly decade-long civil war that had become the twenty-first century's bloodiest conflict. There, he joined the international units of the YPG, a Kurdish militia leading the fight against ISIS. His story, told here through interlaced works of short fiction, memoir, and journal entries, gives an intimate portrait of the lives of internationalists fighting in northeastern Syria during the final days of the YPG's war against the Islamic State: what they left behind, what they hoped to achieve, and what they were willing to sacrifice for the freedom of a people and a land that were not their own.

Although Near Eastern languages and the history of the exact sciences are known for being obscure and deliberately arcane to general audiences, Alice Slotsky has paradoxically established her legacy by exposing these topics to a wider audience. As a visiting professor at Brown University, Slotsky has taught more students than any previous Assyriologist and successfully brought this discipline to a wider audience than previously imagined possible. This volume, with articles written by former students, as well as colleagues, pays tribute to her broad interests.