The World Though Einstein-Colored Glasses

Just read Albert Einstein’s The World As I See It. The book, published in German in 1933 and in English a year later, was Einstein’s first publication directed at a general audience. The first half is devoted to science, both to an explanation of Einstein’s work and a record of his thoughts on the [...]

Guns of August, Pity of War

I’ve been delving into histories of the First World War. I recently finished two books by popular historians, Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and Niall Ferguson’s Pity Of War. Though the first covers only the first month of the war, and the second examines several topics over the time frame of the [...]

Arthur Conan Doyle- Historian

The man remembered for Sherlock Holmes was not only a novelist, but a contemporary historian as well.
Searching for a good history of WWI in the Widener Library, I stumbled across his 5-volume his of the war. I decided to see whether his writing ability carried over to this new field.
One might expect that a [...]

An End to War: Don’t get even, get MAD

My last post was a lengthy attempt to explain how the two World Wars changed Europeans’ philosophy, making another major European war unlikely.
In this post I will propose a shorter, simpler explanation.
It’s all about technology.
Before World War One, the logistics of transportation and supply did not allow for large armies to take the field. [...]

The War to End All Wars

The memory of the Great European War, of millions of young men fighting and dying to win a few yards of shell-pocked mud, was enough to convince many that war was an ugly, irrational, pointless endeavor which civilized nations should have the good sense to avoid in perpetuity.  They hoped that something good could emerge [...]

Maliki on Iraq

Iraq’s Prime Minister writes about his country’s past and future in the Wall Street Journal.
There’s a lot of fluff, but also a lot of badly needed perspective.

Military Recruiting

I was talking tonight to a friend who’s going to West Point.
He is getting paid to go to college, and this summer will be getting paid to learn how to parachute and to take some summer classes in France. Next fall, he’ll be getting paid again to study abroad in France. When he [...]