An Honorable Exit — France in Vietnam
Folks, I’m shifting my small output these days to Substack https://williamkirkland.substack.com/ This is recent contribution Will Every war has winner …
Category Archives: General
Despised and Rejected by A.T. Fitzroy
Despised and Rejected by A.T. Fitzroy (the pseudonym for Rose Allatini) was not only one of the first novels to …
The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Victor Serge
One winter afternoon Comrade Tulayev, an important Party official, is shot dead. By the time The Case of Comrade …
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf
One of the most important scientists of the western tradition, and about whom we in America know little, is …
Dominance and Dishonesty
“Men will not cease to be dishonest, merely because their dishonesties have been revealed or because they have discovered their …
Barbs on War
“They were in the jelly of youth, and this learned Professor poured into their susceptible hearts all the gentle …
All The Kings Men: Old Templates for New Demagogues
After recent study and due consideration I can say with certainty that to call President Trump the reincarnation of …
J.D.Salinger – War Troubled
Combing through the archives for my proposed magnum hopus, “What We Talk About When We Talk About War,” I came …
How War Began – Way Back Then
Why do we do it, so often, with such relish? Go to war, that is. Is it locked into our …
The Populist Explosion by John Judis
The word “populism” has re-entered the American vocabulary with more force than since it first made an appearance in the …
A Matter of Degrees
These are notes I took while reading Gino Segre’s A Matter of Degrees (2002) when it first came out. This …
WW I In The Italian Alps: Torneranno i Prati by Ermanno Olmi
Ermanno Olmi is best known in the United States for his 1978 movie, The Tree of Wooden Clogs, even though …