War in the Modern World

George Kennan: An American Life, by the preeminent Cold War historian John Gaddis, is a magnificent book about a brilliant but rather unlikeable man. In War in the Modern World, we had both Mr. Gaddis and Mr. Kennan force-fed to us. As a subordinate to the U.S. ambassador in Moscow postwar, Kennan famously wrote the "long telegram" that spelled out the strategy of containment that, with various ups and downs, defined American policy toward the Soviet Union for more than half a century. Very early, though, Kennan went from brilliant youth to paranoid old man, and if his later advice had been heeded as carefully as his long telegram, very likely the Soviet Union would still be with us, and Europe would still be divided. Here are my notes from the book.

And yet another fine book: Karl Marlantes wrote the magnificent Vietnam war novel Matterhorn. Now he has combined his experience as a Marine platoon leader with his new life as a best-selling author to produce a meditation on (as the title says) What It Is Like to Go to War. It's interesting just on the surface level of comparing the novel to his real-life experiences in Vietnam, which are scattered through the book. It's also a Platonic reflection on how a nation can develop a class of warriors who can fight fiercely, intelligently, and humanely, and thus come home without sullying the country's reputation and without damaging their own minds and hearts. (Mr. Marlantes is up front about his own emotional problems in civilian life.) The book isn't intended for the warriors but for those who send them into combat--and that includes you and me, the American voters. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford