George W. Bush's War on Terror has led to seventeen years of armed conflict, making it the longest war in US history. In Spiral (Simon & Schuster, 2016), Professor of English and Journalism Mark Danner traces this perpetual and continuously widening struggle. He shows how Americans have grown tolerant of perpetual war in the name of security, even as some of our accustomed freedoms are circumscribed, and as troubling military tactics including torture and indefinite detention are deployed. After an introduction by Joyce Carol Oates, Danner will speak briefly about his work and then open the floor for discussion.