The White War: Life and Death on the Italian Front 1915-1919
Nothing like good history, thoroughly researched and well written, helps better to put in place pieces of the immense human puzzle …
Author Archives: Will Kirkland
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
A recent article in the NY Times Tuesday Science section caught my attention and brought to mind one of the …
Resisted War, Resisted Racism, Resisted Silence: George Houser
Ninety Nine years is only the last accomplishment of George Houser’s amazing life: WW II conscientious objector, 1940 Co-founder of the …
Walking the Sierras, One Millennium at a Time
As a kid, like many other kids, I was fascinated by time travel. And perplexed. If I could go back …
Lakes Basin, Sierra Nevada, CA
Besides reading and pondering on the human history that got us here, I sometimes wander the really deep history — …
1913: Seeds of Conflict in Palestine
1913: Seeds of Conflict, a 2014 PBS distributed documentary by Ben Loeterman, is a fine, short introduction to the little …
The African Queen: WW I Adventureland
Needing a break from my sometimes distressing immersion in WWI memoirs and history [here, here and here] I thought I’d …
The Crimson Field: Nursing at the Western Front
Happy to recommend a PBS/BBC mini-series that hasn’t got much attention: The Crimson Field Set in an imaginary field hospital …
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain’s Memoir of WW I
Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, recently brought to view by the movie of the same name, unaccountably escaped my decades long reading …
Miracolo a Milano — Neo Realism in Italy Goes Magical
Several weeks ago at the wonderful Italian language school, Romanica, in Modena, Italy one of the after class treats was a …
Vera Brittain: Not only the Movie, the Book
Military historian, Simon Jones, says Vera Brittain’s memoir, Testament of Youth, upon which the new movie is based, is one …
Testament of Youth — WW I Pacifist Comes to Film
Vera Brittain, one of the least lost of the Lost Generation of WW I, is on her third revival …