Of history, warfare, leadership, and alcohol
Weird, just the other day it was July and I was thinking that my book review post wouldn't be colossally late again. Yet, here we are, unaccountably in September and I'm still writing about June. Time is a construct and I am against it. Still, we press on. Maybe, unlike the US strike on Iran …
Continue reading "A Badly Belated June Reading List"
Dear PBS, So, I don't say this enough, but I really doggone love you. You launched my passion for history. You made me read more books. And you made me tolerate and almost become interested in science. Which, as my mother could tell you, is a real feat. And you did this at the cost …
Continue reading "Viewers Like Us: A Love Letter to PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting"
The other day I went and stood in front of the new section of the World War I memorial in Washington, DC and looked at it. Memorials are meant to make you feel something. I felt nothing. I felt nothing when I looked at the figures. So I looked at the equipment. I looked at …
Continue reading "Thoughts While Visiting the U.S. National World War I Memorial"
Spaceballs (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer / Brooksfilms) Editor's note (with apology built in): Reader, if as you peruse the following, you wonder whether the author is sick in the head or does not understand FM 6-22 but at all, rest easy. This, but for the negligence and oversight of the editor, should have run on the 1st …
Continue reading "All I Really Need to Know about Leadership I Learned from Spaceballs"
I was in Hawaii for the first time earlier this year. Expecting a sunny beach vacation, it was actually more of a profound learning experience. I was not expecting to be provoked in thought as much as I was. For our purposes, the thing that stayed with me most was the state motto, formerly the …
Continue reading "What are the Obligations of Leadership?"
I will not apologize for my horrendous title. You deserve it. When the world is a mess, you lean into your reading list. Hard. This month was a solid mix of military history and historical fiction, with author Naomi Novik once again dropping some bangers. She is rapidly turning into one of my favorite authors. …
Continue reading "April Showers Bring May Books"
Reader, in an attempt to break out of my writer's malaise (sounds far better than "writer's block," doesn't it?), I am going to break one of my cardinal rules as a blogger: not reviewing books. See, once you start reviewing books, it becomes an expectation. And once something is expected of you, it stops being …
Continue reading "April is the Cruelest Month, but not for my Reading List"
The United States was born of a desire to leave behind monarchial government and instead live under a republic. Although the structure of the United States was explicitly crafted to have both democratic and anti-democratic elements, the perils of democracy have been part of the American discussion from the beginning (“When a majority is included in a faction, …
Continue reading "Failure Mechanisms in Democratic Regimes – an Army’s Role"
In the woods of northeast France, a group of American artillery officers watched their olive drab-clad batterymen set up their tents in a peaceful glade. It would be the last such quiet the battery would experience for some time. It was summer 1918, and the men of the 305th Field Artillery were going to the …
Continue reading "Diversity: The U.S. Military’s Not-So-Secret Weapon"
While doing some reading about the early American Revolution, I came across a famous sentence I’ve read a dozen times over the years in a variety of contexts. This time, though, it was as if I were reading it for the first time. The words belonged to famous patriot pamphleteer Thomas Paine: These are the times that try men's souls: The …
Continue reading "Did You Mean It?"
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