Underbelly

Mrs. Buce asked if I could suggest a good history of the War in Viet Nam.  I said, "oh sure," and quickly bogged down.  I dug out ...

It's probably nothing to be proud of, but I confess to a certain fascination with "defeat" literature--stories about wreckag...

Oh, now I know why I've been rattling on about Theodore Dreiser.  It's because I have been reading Evan Thomas' admirable The W...

Here's a shoutout for Paul Kennedy's Engineers of Victory , a fine book even if it is difficult to say just exactly what it is abou...

For no particular reason I find myself considering events that may or may not trigger wars, particularly, though not exclusively, those th...

This journey alone has recompensed me for my departure from Paris by presenting me with so many new sights and experiences--things that  s...

I've finished my audioread of Walter Borneman's The Admirals , thus further filling in the many gaps in knowledge from my childhood...

All this military stuff: it's not that I'm so interested in military history per se --I'm no better at doping out a battle plan...

I've finished up my Ike biography (though perhaps not finished writing about it).  I've moved on to Walter Borneman's The Admi...

Surveying the Eisenhower presidency, Jean Edward Smith (cf. link , link , link ) writes with obvious fascination about one of its  most in...

How far can we blame General/President Eisenhower for the Cold War and its umbrella of nuclear terror?  In his biography of Ike, Jean Edwar...

One more short book not to throw out : Glen Gray's  The Warriors  appears to persist in print, if just barely, but I suspect it wouldn...

...with Max Hastings about his new WWII book: link.   Sounds like an enormously decent and likeable man.

On this day (N.S.) in 1704: the Battle of Blenheim, where 52,000 allied troops (Britain, Austrian Empire) faced down 56,000 French etc.   Wi...

Somehow we at Chez Buce have stumbled onto a distinctive literary genre--war books of a sort, but more particularly, books about people caug...

Asks the Wichita Bureau. NATO has shot its arsenal dry in Libya in two months.  Cf. link . "Right now," he adds, "I bet th...

As I follow up on what I wrote the other day about war and killing (l ink , link ), I find Kuznicki's fascinating thread ( link , link )...

That piece where I thought I saw a "shift" in the Medal of Honor: Joel suspects I have my history wrong.  Grant that the "ne...

Bryan Fischer, a proponent of the view that Christianity requires more killing, actually has an interesting point about the Medal of Honor--...

Hannibal'a Carthaginians  confronted the Romans in the Battle of Cannae on August 2, 216 B.C. The battle is unparalleled for its carnag...