John Dolan

Authors
John Dolan is the co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast. Dolan is an American poet, author, and essayist, and holds a PhD in rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley. As a senior lecturer at the University of Otago, he taught several courses including composition and creative writing, and published the monograph Poetic Occasion From Milton to Wordsworth.
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John Dolan gained a PhD in rhetoric from the University of California at Berkeley, where he taught before moving to New Zealand in the 1990s. As a senior lecturer at the University of Otago, he taught several courses including composition and creative writing, and published the monograph Poetic Occasion From Milton to Wordsworth.

From the late 1990s, Dolan wrote for and co-edited the eXile, a satirical Moscow-based newspaper. In 2002, he started writing the War Nerd column under the pseudonym Gary Brecher, a character imagined as a smart, unhappy data-entry clerk in Fresno. After the Kremlin shut the eXile down, Dolan was a regular contributor to NSFW Corp and Pando Daily.

He has published several books including Pleasant Hell, The War Nerd, The War Nerd Iliad, and Erdogan Pizza.

Since 2015 he has co-hosted the podcast Radio War Nerd and also writes the podcast’s subscriber newsletter.
Publications by this author
Poetic Occasion From Milton to Wordsworth
Palgrave | 2000
Pleasant Hell
Radio War Nerd | 2004
John describes his memoir as an account of growing up uncool in the rainshadow of the hippies. It’s the story of what the non-heroes were doing, the people whose struggle for acceptance didn’t have a happy ending and aren’t movie material. As one reader put it, “There is nothing more fascinating than a desperate, yearning, misanthropic humanist. For when he’s done with you in the purgatory of Pleasant Hell you’ll feel braver, wiser, more alive and cleaner than you’ve ever been. None of which, of course, he intended. Just make sure you ask him not to take his shoes off.”
The War Nerd
Co-authors: Gary Brecher | Soft Skull Press | 2008
The War Nerd Iliad
Modern Prose Translation of Homer’s Iliad
Feral House | 2017

We recognize the names: Achilles, Odysseus, Zeus, and Apollo. We’re taught that The Iliad is a foundational text of civilization. Until now, The Iliad was hijacked by academics and used to bludgeon schoolchildren as a boring-yet-mandatory reading.

Poet, novelist, essayist, and former teacher John Dolan revisits this ancient tale and restores it to its ancient glory. The Greeks and Trojans are still fighting. The gods are still interfering. But in Dolan’s version, you’ll be amazed at how funny, raw, and terrifying this doomed world of war really is. He strips away at the archaic language to reveal the true meaning and themes that animate this tale of war and futility.

John Dolan’s work under the nom de guerre “Gary Brecher” The War Nerd has been met with both acclaim and controversy. Dolan’s version of The Iliad is sapped of the usual saccharine romance attributed to “heroes” and lets the action tell the story. Regardless of attributed name, Dolan/Brecher is an astute observer of modern warfare who now turns that keen analysis to the most classical of documented battles, The Iliad.
Erdogan Pizza
Dispatches From a Violent and Grotesque World
Co-authors: Mark Ames | The War Nerd | 2023
Erdogan Pizza is a one-of-a-kind travel memoir that records ‘The War Nerd’ John Dolan’s comic odyssey around the world between 2014 and 2020. In spite of anemia, food poisoning, and attempted assassination-by-delivery scooter, he brings his readers unforgettable accounts of the Greek economic crisis, the uneasy peace of modern Belfast, and the pitiful state of Albanian buses. In his role as War Nerd, he scans each landscape for signs of conflict and describes its military history with his characteristic blend of elegiac lyricism, blinding insight, and gory humor. Fans of Radio War Nerd will appreciate the origin story of the podcast, which Dolan started with Mark Ames in 2015 and which has since became a popular source of military reporting and analysis.
Literature
To the Crows
Selected Essays
Independently Published | 2026

To the Crows is a selection of essays that engages on a deeply intimate level with the dark side of recent American culture and history. Sparing nobody, especially not himself, Dolan describes his relationship to NATO, Reagan, and neoliberal meddling in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The book’s title is a translation of an ancient Greek expression that roughly translates as ‘Go to Hell!’ It’s also an echo of and tribute to Ted Hughes’ amoral Crow (Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow). The essays are representative of Dolan’s unique voice, a mix of comedy, elegy, and excoriation, which in their essence mimic the impassioned caw of a crow.