Three more books - On Killing; War and Our World; Cronopios and Famas 


Which one of these things is not like the others? 

So, it's been a while but at least I've begun to acquire good reading habits. One of these habits, a key to successfully reading many books, is SELECT SHORT BOOKS THAT ARE EASY TO READ.

On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman is not really short, but there are diagrams, and what not, and wide margins. I'm not sure what I'd call this book - a long essay on the traditionally difficult task of soldiers killing other soldiers in combat. Grossman makes clear that killing other people is difficult, the closer your are to someone (physically, morally, culturally) the harder it is to kill them, and there are rites performed for and by returning soldiers that help reduce the potential of post-traumatic stress, rites that were generally denied the Viet Nam veterans. But Lt. Col. Dave is worried about how efficient our soldiers have become (15-20% of WWII soldiers fired their weapons at the enemy, 90% of Viet Nam soldiers did), and how video games make killers. I wasn't sure what to expect from this book - there didn't seem to be enough meaty research backing his assertions. He doesn't describe the scope or method of his interviews to help readers assess the validity of his conclusions based on the anecdotes he recounts. A good read, nonetheless, if for nothing else than to pull to the front of my mind what it is that the US is asking of the soldiers in Iraq.

War and Our World - John Keegan's series of lectures given on the BBC regarding, you know, War. Is it inevitable? Probably not, he says, so long as we fight war only to end war. Keegan's a great writer and a compelling story teller, but sometimes I don't follow him into his connecting the dots big picture. These lectures were given in 1998, so his conclusions seem a bit outdated. It seem that the UN is not going to be the instrument to enforce peace through war that Keegan hopes. And the problems lately with war lately don't appear to be small unstable states. Rather, the combatants have been mammoth industrial nations or non-state organizations.

After those two, I needed something a tad less grim, so I snatched up "Cronopios and Famas" by Julio Cortazar. Brilliant, hilarious, and sharply insightful. And short.

What's next? I see that Bernard Fall book, still unopened on the bookshelf... must resist.  

Posted: Sun - May 15, 2005 at 07:35 AM           |

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