What difference can one person make in an imperfect, imperiled, yet beautiful world? In this stunning combination of memoir, history, reporting, visual culture, literature, and theology—winner of the 2018 PEN America Award for Creative Nonfiction—Sarah Sentilles tells the stories of Howard, a conscientious objector during World War II, and Miles, a former prison guard at Abu Ghraib. The pacifist and the soldier both create art in response to war: Howard builds a violin; Miles paints portraits of detainees. Much like a notebook, Sentilles offers brief, vivid passages that form a collage of related observations and events, with an urgent hope at its core: that art might offer tools for remaking the world.