At War is a newsletter about the experiences and costs of war with stories from Times reporters and outside voices.

Earlier this month, Zachary Bell, a former Marine rifleman and infantry squad leader, received an unsolicited email from the head of Capstone, a publisher of children’s books in Minnesota.

The New York Times Magazine had just published Bell’s first article for the At War channel, in which he had detailed his reaction this summer to observing his two daughters, ages 8 and 10, reading “War in Afghanistan: An Interactive Modern History Adventure,” a book in Capstone’s You Choose series. The book included a chapter on an operation in 2010 in Marjah, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand Province, in which Bell participated. He watched and listened as they confronted the text’s notional choices, including how to navigate the perilous landscape and whether to fire upon Afghan men who might be snipers — at risk of committing a war crime.

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Bell’s reaction was unsparing, reflecting his uneasy relationship with his own service in the Afghan war and his surprise upon seeing his children, after a visit to the local library’s children’s section, puzzle over the same bloody deployment that had defined a period of his life. It was not that he was opposed to discussions with his children about the war; he is preparing for the day when he will have these discussions firsthand. It was that the book seemed too light, and presented fictional scenarios where real facts would do.