BOOK REVIEW: 'The soldiers in Afghanistan do not have history on their side'
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- Written by Henry Adams
The Bryn Mawr Classical Review's British reviewer of Frank L. Holt's new book, Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan (UC Press, 2005) approves of the American author's attempt to use ancient history to shed light on current events in Central Asia. -- Both terrain and social structure militate against enduring success for coalition forces in Afghanistan. -- "So there are meaningful patterns, and lessons can be learned from Alexander's experiences. Holt writes that the war in Bactria and Sogdia is typified by 'charismatic leadership, fierce local loyalties, shifting alliances, guerilla tactics, gritty endurance, and inborn xenophobia,' and he states that the strategy and tactics of Alexander's enemy Spitamenes 'anticipated those that have distinguished the campaigns of modern Afghan militants: the element of surprise, the avoidance of warfare waged from a fixed position, the use of terror, the exploitation of weather and terrain, the application of primitive technologies to achieve unexpected results' (pages 81-82). The implied lesson is that the Coalition troops in Afghanistan today can be the master of any battlefield, and still lose the war. A tactical victory can be a strategic defeat. The soldiers who invaded Afghanistan to liberate it from the Taliban do not have history on their side." ...
BOOK REVIEW: Lee Siegel on Sean Wilsey's 'Oh the Glory of It All'
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- Written by Fran Lucientes
The overt connection to contemporary politics doesn't emerge here until the last sentence of this review. -- But there are many insights into contemporary culture on the way to that point in this caustic review of a memoir about growing up rich in San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s. -- The theme: American self-absorption....
BOOK REVIEW: A history of 20th-century France as multiple narratives
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- Written by Henry Adams
The Economist reviews a new history of 20th-century France by a British historian this week. -- Rod Kedward, a British historian, divides the period he has chosen into three, each part characterized by an underlying preoccupation. 1900-1931 is the era of the primacy of the republic, when ideas about France's universalist message, its faith in reason and civilization, and its secular anti-clericalism were entrenched. The 1920s-1969 marks the spiral of ideology, when the aftermath of the Great Depression marked an intensified and highly contested quest for alternative ideals, from communism and socialism to fascism. The 1960s-2000s covers the obsession with identity, an era when France tries to find a place in a globalizing, post-colonial, post-ideological world. ...