The Starched Blue Skies of Spain – a Remembrance by Josephine Herbst
The Starched Blue Skies Of Spain by Josephine Herbst is a small, mostly overlooked gem of reportage/memoir from the Civil …
Category Archives: War
The Face of War –Martha Gellhorn, her life
Martha Gellhorn (1908 – 1998,) referred to by some as one of the world’s great war correspondents did not write …
“Spain In Our Hearts” by Adam Hochschild
The Spanish Civil war, from July 17, 1936 to April 1, 1939, cost some half a million Spanish lives; another half …
Not So Quiet On the Western Front, A Woman Looks at WW I
Helen Zenna Smith, who wrote one of the most powerful witnesses to war I’ve ever read, was the pseudonym of …
“The Human Body” by Paolo Giordano, Italian Soldiers in Afghanistan
Paolo Giordano’s The Human Body comes with encomiums such as ” a stunning exploration of war,” “a great novel of …
The Courage Not to Go to War
“I was a coward. I went to the war.” is one of the most true and courageous lines in Tim …
Across The Black Waters — Indian-British Soldiers at the Western Front
That British, French and German soldiers fought and died in their millions on the Western Front in WW I is …
Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War….
The civil war in Spain, 1936-1939, was the dark warning to the world of the war to follow, in almost every …
William Faulkner and WW I: A Fable
Since I’ve been sparse in posting these last weeks, for various (all good) reasons, I thought I’d re-post this look …
Thinking of the Tao Te Ching After the (Persian Gulf) War
A poem by by Thom Tammaro: “Lao Tzu, I think of you at the gates of Chou near Han Ku Pass, …
The Wound: Algeria then, Afghanistan now…
The Wound /Des Hommes, is an absolutely remarkable novel from Laurent Mauvignier, his seventh [now up to eleven] in the …
Halima’s Path: Love, Neighbors, Enemies and Loss in the Bosnian War
I prefer movies that immerse me in the real world, rather than those which provide distraction, through song and dance, fanciful fictions or …