The record-setting box office performance of American Sniper has everyone talking about (and writing about) the movie. Here’s a very interesting take from a vet who served in Iraq. “If we saw Iraqis as humans, we’d have to learn how to live in a world far, far more complicated and painful than the difficult, painful one we currently live in. Messy, trauma-filled, beautiful, and altogether human; all of us breathing the oxygen of our time.”

+ And here’s another piece, written before the movie came out, that will make you think about our need for heroes, the media’s role in feeding that need, and how we decide what is true. Truth, Justice and the Curious Case of Chris Kyle: “People need to believe, because without that belief, whether it be in their heroes, their country, their church, their world view, their ideology, their political party, or their own goodness, they will crumble.”