The Absolutist: A Novel of War Time Refusal
John Boyne, born in Dublin in 1971, manages to summon the spirits of two very particular men, sent to fight …
Category Archives: War
The French Resistance, A Priest and Dammed Desire
Updated at * below… Jean-Pierre Melville, whose well-regarded noir gangster film are on every Francophile or film-buff’s list of must-sees, …
WW I in Paris: Murder in Aurora
The Past Recaptured (1932), the US title and Frederick Blossom translation of Le Temps retrouvé, is the seventh volume of Marcel Proust’s immortal Remembrance …
The Silence of the Sea — A Film of Noncooperation with Evil
The Silence of the Sea, a 1949 film by Jean Pierre Melville, may be one of the strangest war movies …
Downfall: The Last 10 Days of Hitler’s Reich
I remember being interested in seeing Downfall, the 2004 movie by Oliver Hirschbiegel when it came to theaters, and somehow getting the idea …
War in Afganistan, 1841 — The Widow’s Husband
Tamim Ansary, Afghan-American since childhood, and author of the very fine Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic …
The Crimean War: Orlando Figes
In 1853 the United States was 8 years away from a civil war. Napoleon had been defeated at Waterloo only …
In The Garden of Beasts — a Review
All who have read about, and certainly those who experienced, World War II and Germany’s becoming the vicious murderer of its …
The Arch of Triumph: Love in Paris, 1938 — A Short Take
Ingrid Bergman looks her fabled, youthful best and Charles Boyer dark and dashing as her handsome, older lover in The Arch of …
To End All Wars: Adam Hochschild
If you’ve ever stood a picket line, leafleted about an unpopular cause, been arrested for civil disobedience, fought and lost against the powerful, …
Alhaam: A Film from Iraq — 2005
Alhaam, a movie shot in Iraq in 2004 — during the full catastrophe of the US invasion and related Iraqi …
Paths of Glory: A Novel and A Film of War, Books,
As local author Adam Hochschild makes the rounds with his latest, amazing book, To End All Wars [following King Leopold’s …