Last week I posted Paul Fussell's essay about his experience as a Second World War platoon leader in the brutal final days of the European campaign. Today I'm posting excerpts from his stunning book, Wartime. The essay focused on his personal experience in the war, but this one focuses on the broader impact the war … Continue reading Paul Fussell on the Myth of the Good War
This piece originally appeared in Harpers in 1982. Here's a link to the original. The 80th anniversary of Pearl Harbor on Tuesday set off yet another round of reminiscences about World War II -- the Good War fought for Righteous Principles by the Greatest Generation. As someone who managed to escape being drafted into the … Continue reading Paul Fussell — My War
This post is a commentary on a classic essay by Charles Tilly, "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime," which appeared in the 1985 book Bringing the State Back In. Here's a PDF of the original chapter. His essay is a riff on an aphorism he developed earlier: the state make war and war … Continue reading The State as Organized Crime
This post is a stunning essay by Paul Fussell published in The New Republic in 1981. Here's a link to a PDF of the original. On August 2, we observed the 76th anniversary of the atom bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. In light of that, it seems like a good time to revisit the debate about … Continue reading Paul Fussell — “Thank God for the Atom Bomb”
This post is a tribute to the Normans and how they came to shape modern Europe. It draws primarily from the book The Normans: From Raiders to Kings by Lars Brownworth and also from a recent essay in Unherd by Ed West. The Normans were Vikings who in the ninth century conquered a piece of … Continue reading How the Normans Shaped Modern Europe
This post is an essay about the brief but glorious golden age of the US university during the three decades after World War II. American higher education rose to fame and fortune during the Cold War, when both student enrollments and funded research shot upward. Prior to World War II, the federal government showed little … Continue reading An Affair to Remember: America’s Brief Fling with the University as a Public Good
Today I want to explore an interesting case of counterfactual history. What would have happened if Napoleon Bonaparte had won in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo? What consequences might have followed for Europe in the next two centuries? That he might have succeeded is not mere fantasy. According to the victor, Lord Wellington, the … Continue reading What If Napoleon Had Won at Waterloo?
Tell me if you think this sounds familiar: In its latter years (500-700 ACE), the Roman Empire faced a formidable challenge from two devastating environmental forces -- dramatic climate change and massive epidemic. As Mark Twain is supposed to have said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." During our own bout of climate … Continue reading Resilience in the Face of Climate Change and Epidemic: Ancient Rome and Today’s America
This post is an overview of the 2014 book by Stanford classicist Ian Morris, War! What Is It Good For? In it he makes the counter-intuitive argument that over time some forms of war have been socially productive. In contrast with the message of 1970s song by the same name, war may in fact be good … Continue reading War! What Is It Good For?
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 