I lived it almost thirty years ago. I started writing it almost seventeen years ago. Today, at long last, The Accidental Terrorist is here. (Quick, lock your doors!) What more can I say to you about it? I hope you'll order a copy, if you haven't
Happy Monday, Accidental Army! I know Mondays aren't the most thrilling days of the week, but I'm pretty amped about this one because it means that my oh-so-long-gestating memoir, The Accidental Terrorist, will be officially released tomorrow! I've been looking forward to this day
Excerpted from The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary by William Shunn, available now! My mission began around the time the prophet Ezra Taft Benson forcefully reaffirmed Joseph Smith’s declaration that the Book of Mormon was “the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of
Excerpted from The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary by William Shunn, available now! Elder Fowler tossed a golf ball lightly in the air as I trailed him up the shady walk. He bobbled the catch, and the ball clacked off the concrete. “Aw, shit,” he said, lunging for
Excerpted from The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary by William Shunn, available now! Two years earlier, my father and I were driving back roads somewhere east of Victorville in the California desert when he sprang a terrifying question on me. “Son,” he asked, “do you want to serve
Excerpted from The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary by William Shunn, available now! At the tap on my shoulder I jerked my head. “Elder Shunn, you’re up,” whispered Elder Rosenberg. Time for my intake interview. I stood and picked my way through the cluster of folding chairs
Excerpted from The Accidental Terrorist: Confessions of a Reluctant Missionary by William Shunn, available now! 23 February 1987 The detective unlocks my tiny room and drags a plastic chair in from the hallway. “Mister Shunn,” she says, “I’d like to ask you some questions now, if you have a
A handful of links have been accumulating in my to-be-posted queue over the past couple of weeks. Time to toss them out there for consumption. First, longtime Mormon apostle Boyd K. Packer died last Friday at the age of 90. To many of us who grew up in the church,
We had no idea that what we were really doing was a cover shoot for my memoir. It was the late summer of 1987. I was stationed with my assigned mission companion, Elder Tim Bishop, in Bonners Ferry, Idaho. We lived rent-free in a small house owned by a local
In 1985, I was a far bigger fan of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny than just about any other musician. The album that infected me was 1982's Offramp, which sounded unlike anything else I'd ever heard. I became a hardcore consumer of any and all vinyl featuring
A previous outtake from my memoir The Accidental Terrorist ended with these lines: Women wield a strange power over the male missionary—even women who don't exist. Perhaps especially women who don't exist. There's another scene in the book that addressed what I was
In a message exchange a few months ago, a friend and former colleague from my missionary days reminded me of a funny story from 1988 involving the elder who was then my companion. I didn't immediately recall the incident, but then when I was rooting around the other
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