What’s a book or movie that genuinely scared you?
View all responses
The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert
PROMPT: Genuinely Scared
Reply
Tag Archives: war
BOOK: “Tribe” by Sebastian Junger
Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian JungerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Author site
This book reflects upon how we are evolutionarily optimized to live in tribal communities, and how life in super-tribal societies (ones in which no one can know everyone else, where one has no shared fate, and where – for better or worse – one can easily end up invisible) is doing us in. The book sprang from an article Junger wrote about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD,) an affliction Junger found himself with after working as a war correspondent in Afghanistan (pre-911) and elsewhere. It might seem like there is a large leap from human social structures to PTSD, but it turns out where a community’s experience is all tied together, PTSD is relatively rare and / or fades quickly. It is because the afflicted soldier is going from the tribal entity (military unit) back to a decidedly conflicted super-tribe that trauma is so pernicious. Junger explores cases such as the bombing of London in WWII and the shelling and sniper attacks in Bosnia in the 90’s, where such afflictions were far rarer than one would expect because there was — to some degree — a shared experience of the traumatic events.
I found this book fascinating. It’s quite short. It has just four chapters. The first discusses the importance of tribe in human development, generally. It then looks at war, PTSD, and the challenge of returning home (and why so many soldiers have such difficulty doing so, though one would expect a peaceful world would be decidedly preferrable to a warring one.)
I found this book to be gripping and intensely thought-provoking, and I’d recommend it for all readers.
View all my reviews
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
BOOK: “Biological War” by Annie Jacobsen
Biological War: A Scenario by Annie JacobsenMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher site — Penguin
As in her last book, Jacobsen builds a horrifying scenario that is made all the more horrifying by a well-researched examination of the possibilities and probabilities of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The previous book imagined a hypothetical nuclear war started by North Korea. This one begins with an accidental lab leak of a “chimera” (a biological weapon that combines infectious agents to increase contagiousness, lethality, incurableness, or some combination thereof) from a Russian laboratory.
One might wonder how apt a title with “war” in it is for an accidental even. It turns out that even an accident might have to be treated an act of war. (Imagine the nation in which the accident takes place has built a working vaccine. That country might not have intended to release the weapon, but they may come to see military advantage in keeping the vaccine to themselves, letting enemies be weakened as other nations have to develop their own countermeasures from scratch [which we know from COVID can take many months — if not longer.])
Jacobsen does a fine job of mixing in moments in which outcomes are worse than one might expect with instances in which luck shines on people (i.e. the way the real world works.) In many cases, Jacobsen was able to draw from real world events that happened during the COVID pandemic, making adjustments for the very different nature of the infectious agent in this scenario. Building from the “fog of war” of COVID, the reader is shown how events might go wrong in ways that could at first blush seem unrealistic — except for the fact that similar missteps already happened in the real world.
As with Jacobsen’s book on nuclear war, the whole scenario takes place over only a few days, with an epilogue that reflects on the longer-term ramifications of the scenario.
I found this book hard to put down. It reads like a novel but with the added feasibility that comes with interviewing experts and studying the relevant history and policy. It is a scary scenario to be certain, but it keeps the reader engaged throughout. I’d highly recommend this book for all readers who can handle reading a doomsday scenario.
View all my reviews
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
PROMPT: Outdated Technology
We’d be better off if the bleeding edge of weapon technology were the pointy stick — not just because of atrocities averted. Also, we’d all have to be more capable in such a world — there is no imposter syndrome among people who have to kill a deer or fish with a spear they hewed themselves. Also, if you are cheesed off with one or more people (or the world,) it is entirely different (and more calming) decision space if one has to go out spearing them individually than if one can spray them with automatic fire from 50 feet away. You’d still have the option, but you’d have to want it more and to accept the inevitability of consequence more fully. Finally, it is quite hard to run an authoritarian dictatorship if your army has weapons of similar capability to any random person.
I don’t know for sure whether “an armed society is a polite society,” but I suspect it is if the pointy stick is the pinnacle of armaments.
I know this makes it sound like I was around in the pre-Bronze era. I was not.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
Tainted (Free Verse)
A gorgeous day:
the sky is blue;
the air is crisp,
and a bird swoops in low
over the field to land
in search of insects.
The sign is kind of a bummer:
It tells me that 13,000
people died here --
most by shitting themselves
into unconsciousness.
(it doesn't use those exact words.)
This is Andersonville --
site of a Civil War prison camp.
Here, I believe in ghosts.
I don't believe in ghosts
when drinking my morning coffee
at my dining room table.
I don't believe in them when I
turn off my bedside lamp.
I don't believe in them anywhere --
anywhere else -- really.
But here they vibrate up
through my boot heals,
and I fear I may
shit myself.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
PROMPT: Lottery
Be fearful. Since I don’t play the usual lottery, the only kind I could win is the kind that they use to draft people for fighting alien invaders.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
PROMPT: Uninvent
As nuclear weapons may yet be the death of us all, they would be a sound candidate. But I think it’s utter fantasy to think that a possible technology can be anything more than delayed. Besides, once GAI (general artificial intelligence) starts freeballing it’ll inevitably stumble onto a mode of death that makes the H-bomb look like a caveman’s campfire by comparison.
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
BOOK REVIEW: “War is a Racket” by Smedley D. Butler
War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier by Smedley D. ButlerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
PDF available online
This impassioned essay is a call for a more restrained — some would call it isolationist — application of military force. Regardless of how one might feel about the isolationist stance, you’ll likely be moved by the essay’s central premise that we have too much war because it’s profitable — not profitable for those who fight and die in wars but for businessmen and politicians.
Butler, a US Marine Corps General, was a fascinating character — a two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient who served in the Philippines, Tianjin (during the Boxer Rebellion,) at various places across Central America and the Caribbean, and in the First World War in Europe. He was also a whistleblower about a plot to unseat FDR. Butler writes in a conversational style that exudes a commanding presence.
I’d highly recommend this essay for its critical insights by one of the most impressive Marine Corp officers of all time.
View all my reviews
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
BOOK: “Mastering the Art of War” by Zhuge Liang & Liu Ji [Trans. & Ed. by Thomas Cleary
Mastering the Art of War: Commentaries on Sun Tzu’s Classic by Zhuge LiangMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher Site — Shambhala
This book combines the writings of two prominent Chinese strategists, Zhuge Liang and Liu Ji. Both men came after Sunzi, author of The Art of War, and Cleary describes these two works as commentaries on the work of Sunzi.
Zhuge Liang’s piece is called The Way of the General and it collects short essays from Records of the Loyal Lord of Warriors. Like many, I first became acquainted with Zhuge Liang from his novelized personage in the Chinese classic, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, in which he is called “Kongming” and is a force to be reckoned with in service to Liu Bei of the Shu Kingdom. Zhuge Liang’s ideas are conveyed as short topical discussions, not unlike Sunzi’s work.
Liu Ji’s manual, Lessons of War, is a bit different in that the explanation of the strategy is briefer than in the works of Sunzi or Zhuge Liang, but Liu Ji always includes an exemplary story from history. This makes Liu Ji’s work a little more narrative. It is interesting to see the varied approach to conveyance of the concepts under consideration.
Because the works of Zhuge Liang and Liu Ji are thin, the book has a fair amount of padding in the form of Translator’s Introductions, both an overall Introduction and one per included work. I was happy with how these were done. They do not drone on but rather give some background that will be useful to the average reader without getting lost in the weeds.
If you’re interested in strategy, be it applicable to war or otherwise, I’d highly recommend this book.
View all my reviews
Share on Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc.
BOOK: Sát Thát by Lê Vân [Illustrated by Nguyễn Bích]
Sát Thát by Lê VânMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher Site – Kim Dong Books
This illustrated book tells the story of the Vietnamese (Tran Dynasty) victories over the invading Yuan Dynasty (Mongolian-controlled China.) It’s a quick read with only a few lines of text per page, while the bulk of each page is a line-drawn monochrome illustration. The illustrations themselves are sufficiently clear and detailed to allow one to follow the general flow of the story.
I used a translator and don’t know how accurate it was or –more particularly — how true to the original it was, except to say that the translator produced a coherent story that seemed to be consistent with other sources.
This book focuses entirely on the military campaigns and takes a bit of a jingoistic tone. As I understand it, it doesn’t tell the whole tale as many consider the Mongol incursions to have been successful because they exacted a tribute from the Vietnamese (which was their ultimate goal,) despite the Mongols’ lack of military success. That said, it was an impressive set of military victories for the Tran Dynasty, and the Vietnamese have every right to take pride in them.
I discovered this book in the publisher’s bookstore in Hanoi and thought it was a small enough text with sufficiently detailed illustration to give me some insight into the story, even without any real grasp of the language. I did find reading the book to be informative and interesting and would recommend it for readers military history.
View all my reviews
