Can we imagine, as Samuel Moyn puts it in “Humane,” his smart and provocative new book, “a future of war beyond killing”? It sounds like a worthy goal. Why wouldn’t less killing be anything but better? Yet Moyn suggests that making war less cruel amounts to a centrist compromise that
Tag: War
Robert Middlekauff, Historian of Washington and His War, Dies at 91
He served as a first lieutenant in the Marines from 1952 to 1954, deploying to Korea and Japan. He studied at Yale with Edmund S. Morgan, the renowned historian of Puritanism and colonial life, who remained an influence on him for more than 50 years. After receiving his Ph.D. in
Stephen B. Oates, Civil War Historian, Dies at 85
The American Historical Association, which examined the charges, issued an ambiguous ruling in 1993, saying there was “no evidence” that Dr. Oates had committed plagiarism “as it is conventionally understood.” But it did find evidence “of too great and too continuous dependence, even with attribution, on the structure, distinctive language
A 115-Year-Old War Veteran Looks Back at It All, With God as a Guide
But God persists. He prompts Sam to “inhabit your past as you lived it, without knowing the future that will come of it.” Raised in Louisiana by an abusive father and a loving but cowed mother, Sam enlists to fight in World War I when he’s 16. His father helps
How 2 Jewish Sisters Built a Cultural Oasis During World War II
Braber’s book, published in 2013, explores the extent to which Jewish people were integrated into Dutch society before the war, and how their links to non-Jews or their relative isolation contributed to their ability to resist Nazi oppression. In it, he uses what he describes as a “wide and inclusive
The Phony War on Drugs
He is comfortable telling precartel narco anecdotes that he uncovered in dusty archives, but he skims over some messy details of recent atrocities. For instance, he does not identify Cardinal Posadas by name but refers to the shooting of “the pope’s representative in Mexico,” apparently confusing the cardinal with Geronimo
A World Warfare II Spy Didn’t Dwell to Inform Her Story. Her Nice-Nice-Niece Will.
Yearly when Rebecca Donner visited her great-grandmother’s residence in Chevy Chase, Md., she and her brother would stand in opposition to the kitchen wall to have their heights marked in pencil. When she turned 9, she observed a letter M close to one of many faintest strains. “Who’s that?” she