{"id":31383,"date":"2014-02-09T05:01:11","date_gmt":"2014-02-09T05:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=31383"},"modified":"2014-02-10T02:11:28","modified_gmt":"2014-02-10T02:11:28","slug":"adding-to-the-bookpile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=31383","title":{"rendered":"Adding to the Bookpile"},"content":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski<\/strong>, a.k.a. “zen<\/strong>“]
\n\"\"\u00a0\"\"\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor \/ Hiroshima \/ 9-11 \/ Iraq<\/a><\/strong>\"\"\u00a0by John Dower<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941<\/a>\"\"\u00a0<\/strong>by William Shirer<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II<\/a>\"\"<\/strong>\u00a0by Michael Burleigh<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Picked up a few more books for the antilibrary<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dower is best known for his prizewinning\u00a0Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II<\/a><\/strong>\"\", which unfortunately, I have never read. \u00a0Berlin Diaries<\/strong> I have previously skimmed through for research purposes but I did not own a copy. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany<\/a><\/strong>\"\"\u00a0was an immensely bestselling book which nearly everyone interested in WWII<\/strong> reads at some point in time. I would put in a good word for Shirer’s lesser known The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940<\/a><\/strong>\"\"\u00a0. It was a very readable introduction to the deep political schisms <\/a>of France<\/strong> during the interwar and Vichy<\/a><\/strong> years which ( as I am not focused on French history) later made reading Ian Ousby’s<\/strong> Occupation: The Ordeal of France 1940-1944<\/a><\/strong>\"\"\u00a0more profitable.<\/p>\n

I am a fan of the vigorous prose of British historian Michael Burleigh, having previously reviewed<\/a> \u00a0Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism<\/a><\/strong>\"\"\u00a0here and can give a strong recommendation<\/a> for his The Third Reich: A New History<\/a><\/strong>\"\". \u00a0Burleigh here is tackling moral choices in war and also conflict at what Colonel John Boyd<\/a><\/strong> termed “the moral level of war”<\/a>\u00a0in a scenario containing the greatest moral extremes in human history, the Second World War<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The more I try to read, the further behind I fall!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[by Mark Safranski, a.k.a. “zen“] \u00a0\u00a0 Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor \/ Hiroshima \/ 9-11 \/ Iraq\u00a0by John Dower\u00a0 Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941\u00a0by William Shirer Moral Combat: Good and Evil in World War II\u00a0by Michael Burleigh\u00a0 Picked up a few more books for the antilibrary. Dower is best known for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,216,205,420,133,835,471,215,147,132,483,574,87,873,425,165,294,51,296,541,78,336,45,210,154,39,367,929,757,295,771,10,486,127,530,211,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-461","category-academia","category-al-qaida","category-authors","category-book","category-contemplative","category-cultural-intelligence","category-culture","category-diplomatic-history","category-dystopia","category-extremists","category-failed-state","category-foreign-policy","category-germany","category-government","category-historians","category-historiography","category-history","category-hitler","category-human-rights","category-ideas","category-intellectuals","category-iraq","category-islamist","category-japan","category-military","category-military-history","category-morality","category-musings","category-nazis","category-nuance-subtlety","category-state-failure","category-state-terrorism","category-strategy","category-strategy-and-war","category-terrorism","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31383"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31399,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31383\/revisions\/31399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}