• “Born This Way?”: Beth Schwartzapfel explores the most controversial issue in transgender medicine today for the American Prospect.

• Charlie Pierce of Esquire looks back in anger on the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war.

• A dying vet writes a final letter to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

• We’re very glad to report that Hillman Prize-winner Ta-Nehisi Coates came through a bout of anaphylactic shock and even wrote a good essay about the experience.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]