Alan Kramer. Dynamic of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the First World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. The barbarisation of warfare from the Balkan wars onward, including the targeting of civilians. This looks the goods (and a worthy successor to the book he co-authored with John Horne, German Atrocities, 1914), though oddly there’s […]
The above photograph, and all of the following, are from Poison Gas (London: Union of Democratic Control, 1935).
I recently had the somewhat guilty pleasure of watching Flood, a film (from a novel) about the sudden devastation of London by a massive storm surge — predicted by a scientist who had long been dismissed as a crank — which swamps the Thames Barrier, submerges most of the city’s landmarks, kills a couple of
[Cross-posted at Revise and Dissent.] It’s 50 years since Sputnik I lifted off. Although I was airminded as a kid, I was much more spaceminded. So 1957 was always a crucial year in my understanding of history back then: it was where the modern age began. (In fact the very first historical work I ever
I ordered these months before I left for London; of course they only turned up a couple of weeks after I left! Basil Collier. The Defence of the United Kingdom. Uckfield: Naval and Military Press, 2004 [1957]. The volume of the official British history of the Second World War dealing primarily with air defence, but
Raymond H. Fredette. The Sky on Fire: The First Battle of Britain 1917-1918 and the Birth of the Royal Air Force. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1991 [1966]. Even though it’s now over 40 years old, this is still the best book around on the Gotha raids on Britain in 1917-8. F. S. Northedge. The
I’ve been reading the Daily Mail quite a lot since I’ve been here, but only issues published in 1940 or earlier. So I’m grateful to Jakob for pointing me in the direction of an article in today’s edition about German boardgames from the Second World War. It’s fascinating, but why is it news? Ostensibly because
While I’m on the topic of Things to Come, I should correct a mistake I made in the talk I gave at the summer school. I said that Things to Come didn’t do particularly well at the box office. I still haven’t found any actual figures for that, but I’ve found what may be better,
So this was the week I finally broke down and bought some books — I made it nearly a month in London without being forced to, thanks to Skoob Books and the Imperial War Museum. I am only human, it turns out. Norman Angell. The Great Illusion — Now. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1938. A Penguin Special
The degree to which science fiction accurately predicts the future is not really the point; its value is more as an exploration of what people might do and what society might look like if you change things in a few fundamental ways. (And for my purposes, it’s the assumptions underlying a given exploration which are
