Tell me a story.

That was my plea each day to my 3rd-grade teacher at the Department of Defense school I attended in Spain while my father was stationed at Torrejon Air Force Base.

Oh, the stories she would tell and the places my mind would go as she read Roald Dahl’s “James and the Giant Peach,” E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” and other children’s classics. The stories she read connected me to the wider world and instilled in me a desire to learn more about what life had to offer.

Later, as a teen, the stories I read were more troubling and thought-provoking. Browsing through books like George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm,” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” taught me that not all stories have storybook endings.

But it wasn’t until I read Bob Woodward and Carl Bern

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