tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:54:28 +0000Blogging on the history of war.http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)Blogger177125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-596464278565289253Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:42:00 +00002008-10-24T14:18:01.953ZI'm finding this M.A. course enjoyable, but a bit overwhelming. There's always something needing to be done, and it's going to get worse before it gets better - rather like the economy, it seems. To my surprise, I'm finding my US History 1877-1920 seminars and my teaching assistant duties more stimulating than my two war-related courses. I do wonder, though, whether I've reached a high-water-markhttp://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/10/stress-test.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-1258146923771395982Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:38:00 +00002008-09-28T00:41:05.583ZThe Canadian War Museum has unveiled an excellent set of web pages related to Canada's experience of the First World War. However, there's an absence on this page among the exhibits that begs a question - could they find nothing about opposition to conscription among French speakers?http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/09/ottawa-nous-avons-un-problme.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-6474413815956313708Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:07:00 +00002008-09-20T16:07:16.273ZMannie Gentile, who works at the Antietam battlefield park, assembled a diorama on his lawn depicting events that occurred in the fighting over Bloody Lane on 17 September 1862. He used unpainted toy soldiers, with some very detailed flags, and in between the photos taken at various stages of the project he has inserted excerpts from the Official Records or from other books about the American http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/09/dulce-et-decorum-non-est.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-2838808243374212760Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:20:00 +00002008-09-18T13:33:45.384ZFor a seminar today, I've had to read an article that appeared in The Historical Journal in 2007, 'The Current State of Military History', by Mark Moyar of the USMC University. Mostly it is a refutation of points made by the British military historian Jeremy Black, in his book Rethinking Military History. However, there's an interesting nugget about the American problems in fighting the war in http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/09/disorganization-and-american-failure-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-4457022719680977345Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:19:00 +00002008-09-15T12:28:29.170ZThis cropped up on my daily rounds. It's interesting that the blog's author regards the crimes against the 'Comfort Women' as having gone largely unacknowledged. I'm not sure I'd agree with that. However, traditional (and bestselling) military history often focuses too much on campaigns and not enough on the other aspects of war, and I can see how in that context one might sense it had gone http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/09/comfort-women-project.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-5592014745483107945Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:55:00 +00002008-09-15T12:19:24.285ZIan Buruma is a thoughtful writer, whom I used to read regularly in the New York Review of Books. He's written an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times on the 'lessons' of Munich. The role of the Munich Agreement in American political discourse is, of course, fascinating. Yet one rarely hears Europeans using its example, unless they are arguing about how their country should be supporting http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/09/buruma-on-legacy-of-munich.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-8587785557894706455Mon, 15 Sep 2008 11:39:00 +00002008-09-15T11:55:11.138ZA site named the European Center for Military History has posted an after-action report of the 7th Armored Division (US) during the battle of St Vith, part of the Battle of the Bulge. If, like me, you have no experience of military operations yet are interested in how a modern battle is managed, you'll find little nuggets. For example, what do you think divisional HQ sent first to the http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/09/7th-armored-division-at-st-vith.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-3462432111704425197Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:36:00 +00002008-09-10T18:01:04.965ZIn the news, we find assertions that the United States is secretly hunting opponents in the Global War on Terror in Iraq and assassinating them. Famed journalist Bob Woodward implies that there is some kind of technological trickery involved here, as his parallel is the Second World War's Manhattan Project. Well, time will eventually reveal whether his is the right parallel.In the mean time, wehttp://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/09/phoenix-in-desert.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-8274653370578955503Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:36:00 +00002008-09-09T12:39:00.699ZI've arrived in Waterloo, Ontario, and have settled into a small bachelor apartment as I begin my academic year at Wilfrid Laurier University. I hope the hiatus in postings on this blog will be at an end, but I still have to get into a routine, so although posting frequency may increase, it might remain erratic for a little longer.http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/09/meeting-my-waterloo.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-9122306172044379117Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:05:00 +00002008-08-28T15:24:23.685ZApologies to those visiting here in the hope of finding some new content for the past two months. I've had all sorts of problems, worst of all the double mastectomy that my wife has suffered. Thankfully she is on the mend, and all the cancer was excised so will not require further cancer treatment. I've also been preparing to go to Canada, to begin an MA in History, with an intent on focusing on http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/08/slow-time.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-6929539730825186545Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:56:00 +00002008-07-07T11:22:08.554ZPaul Kennedy's influential book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers came out in 1987 and captured the spirit of the age. As the Soviet Union crumbled, the cost to the United States of winning the Cold War would act as a millstone, and the gentle (and sometimes not-so-gentle) decline that affected Imperial Spain, Napoleonic France, and nautical Britain would claim, inexorably, another victim.Nothttp://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/07/where-are-your-falling-great-powers-now.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-5989433273335541149Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:17:00 +00002008-07-01T09:20:56.321ZApologies for not being around for almost a month. I have been preoccupied with my impending move to Canada and also with another blogging project, not yet ready for public viewing, called De civitate sabermetricarum. I hope to resume posts here in the next day or two, addressing a key future issue for military history tangentially inspired by Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/07/absence-apologies.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-1151055386925508419Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:59:00 +00002008-06-04T14:22:20.854ZI've been reading the manuscript of a book about baseball managers by a friend of mine, due to be published by McFarland. It occurs to me that, with all the anxiety over the future of military history in the University, that there are some issues that relate to an historical examination of baseball in particular and sports in general that parallel what has happened over the decades with military http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/06/stay-out-of-ghetto.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-8602984050755470820Fri, 23 May 2008 12:31:00 +00002008-05-23T18:42:32.595ZOne of the great tensions of the British war effort during the First World War was the struggle between "Easterners" and "Westerners" as to the overall strategic direction of the war. (You'll find one man's view of the struggle both during and after the war in this pdf.) The Germans more or less enforced the victory of the latter, through their success in the field over Russia, leading to a http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/development-of-british-way-of-war-in.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-1642847393019802349Sat, 10 May 2008 11:23:00 +00002008-05-10T12:02:47.259ZHere are a couple of links that I left unposted while working on my Nicholson Baker series. - The Duke of Wellington reportedly referred in 1809 to some troops of his being able to "terrify me". The fact is, the British Army in the 18th and 19th century, like most professional armies of the time, relied on recruits from the poorer sections of society, and probably with a higher number of http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/10-may-roundup.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-4698074497146816332Thu, 08 May 2008 14:05:00 +00002008-05-08T15:30:41.556ZIt makes sense to end this long and tortuous exploration of the issues raised by the publication of Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke today, the 63d anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, because one would think, given the response to Baker's work, that the war had not ended.I like to think of Baker's work in the same way as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The GULAG Archipelago is http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/nicholson-bakers-world-wars-part-6.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-5970662166655476775Tue, 06 May 2008 12:59:00 +00002008-05-06T13:56:49.297ZThe concept of a "Whig interpretation" of history is well established, but one could equally identify what might be called an Atlanticist Interpretation that is at work on the popular understanding of events leading up to the Second World War. Let us review some of the tenets of the Atlanticist Interpretation.(1) The Treaty of Versailles in 1919, ending the war between the Allies and Germany, washttp://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/nicholson-bakers-world-wars-part-5.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-5845668418926134275Fri, 02 May 2008 11:00:00 +00002008-05-02T11:21:47.274ZReviewers (especially British ones) of Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke seem to have lost sight of an important fact. In 1938, London ruled over something like a quarter of the world. This wasn't any federal system, but more of a hodgepodge of regimes that had a direct relationship to the British monarchy. (Like the Trinity, the British monarchy is actually made up of multiple persons, in this case http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/nicholson-bakers-world-wars-part-4.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-8991223059252947021Thu, 01 May 2008 09:06:00 +00002008-05-01T13:03:46.980ZForeigners seeking to comment on American phenomena neglect the history of the United States at their peril. Much of the historical criticism about Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke seems oblivious of American history outside of the tropes presented by Hollywood and television. The "American History Highlight Show" usually leaps directly from the Revolution to the Civil War with, if we're lucky, a http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/05/nicholson-bakers-world-wars-part-3.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-7285972694908070209Wed, 30 Apr 2008 08:19:00 +00002008-04-30T11:52:13.721ZTo understand Baker's own mentality in writing this book, one could do a lot worse than look at the interview he gave to the Barnes & Noble Review. It is long, and his interlocutor sympathetic - thus successfully teases out what was going on in Baker's head. (A shorter, but almost as effective alternative is here.)We find that, as I suggested yesterday, he does indeed attempt to present the storyhttp://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/04/nicholson-bakers-world-wars-part-2.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-6542674282244070916Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:20:00 +00002008-04-29T21:30:04.219ZI've been meaning to mention that the J W Dafoe Foundation awarded its book prize to Tim Cook, a researcher at the Canadian War Museum, for his book At the Sharp End. It certainly seems a boom time in Canadian military history.http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/04/prize-winner.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-8616784855527489983Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:28:00 +00002008-04-30T11:55:09.194ZNicholson Baker, a novelist, has written a book about the Second World War, Human Smoke. A significant clue as to the book's faults is found in this interview. Baker has produced a book largely based on his reading of newspapers. Not researching newspapers in a library, but actual copies of the papers themselves, which he acquired. Baker is also a novelist. The implications of these two facts, I http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/04/nicholson-bakers-world-wars.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-4946873499485168250Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:33:00 +00002008-04-28T12:52:47.652ZWar in IraqI've been working my way through the twelve points in this article about the War in Iraq. The last three points aren't really amenable to the kind of historical approach I've limited myself to. However, when one looks at Iraq, the parallels with the 1970s conflict in the Lebanon are striking. A regime dominated by a minority has collapsed into civil war (Saddam + Sunnis = Lebanon's Christians; http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/04/war-in-iraq-syria-in-lebanon.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-621436352971222449Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:40:00 +00002008-04-24T11:45:04.189ZWar in IraqI'm working my way through the twelve points in this article, applying an historical perspective to the assertions made. (Click on the War in Iraq label to see the other blog entries in this series.)Points (7) and (8) are, if the Vietnam War is any guideline, related. If the U.S. intends to replace its troops on the ground with Iraqi troops, the American military has a tradition of using air http://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/04/war-in-iraq-dolchstoss.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31299027.post-2837045322276899999Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:43:00 +00002008-04-24T10:16:10.824ZRob Citino, who has featured in this blog not so long ago, has had an address he gave to a meeting of the Society for Military History published on Mark Grimsley's blog. (It includes a link to an article he wrote about the current state of literature in military history.)Both the blog entry and the article are of interest, in part because they tell us about Citino's world view. In the article, hehttp://warreadingroom.blogspot.com/2008/04/professional-military-historian-speaks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Paul Brewer)0