If You Have a Book, You’ll Never Be Alone

Welcome to shield of the Republic Secret Podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Lipman during World Port two that a strong and balanced foreign policy is the necessary shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman, counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments. A Bulwark contributor and a non resident fellow at the Miller Center. My partner in this enterprise is Elliot Cohen, The Roberty Ozgood professor of Strategy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in the Arleigh Burke Chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Elliott, great to see you.

I hope you had an easy fast.

Well, thank you. Easily easy fast. It doesn’t get any easier actually over the years. But, but thank you. I’m, doing well.

I, I think like you, I was wracked guilt after last week when I I thought of all of our devoted listeners, you know, who turned to us for, if not for wisdom, then at least for solace, instead, we produced an episode, the title of which was everything’s going to help because it is. So, as you know, the two of us thought, well, we could do something a little bit more cheerful this week. So we thought we’d talk about something we we love dearly, namely books. And I’m going to begin by, spilling something, which I hope doesn’t get the IG of the defense department and the IG eight department really exercise. So when we were in government together, we would be traveling quite frequently to Europe, where you were doing a magnificent job of patching the Franco American Alliance, you know, back into shape.

There was trips of several days. They were very intense. We’d be going from breakfast through dinner, But I have to confess that once on each trip, there would appear a ninety minute block of time, called cultural support activities. And I think it’s now okay to reveal to, a candid world that actually that was time spent in bookstores. And, you know, our special assistants who now, by the way, occupied pretty senior positions in the Pentagon, although with the other party.

You know, would kind of look at us with sort of bemused, I don’t know, interest, I suppose. But, there was always a great moment of, relaxation was otherwise a pretty intense and crowded time. Maybe we can kick off the discussion. I can ask you what your favorite bookstore is.

I think my favorite bookstore is the Waterstones up by University of London, which had a fantastic remainder section for academic reminders. The problem, you know, on some of these trips was literally not enough space in my suitcase for the haul that would come out of this. Not enough space on my bookshelves, which my wife would periodically remind me of as she tried to impose triage on me. So, you know, one comes in, one goes out.

Yeah. Well, well, I I was actually, we’ve just revealed to our long suffering spouses that we actually came back with these vast words of books, which we were trying to smuggle in. I, I mean, that that is a wonderful waterstones. I’d like, hatchets on Piccadilly, which is actually not a part of waterstones. A smaller bookstore.

It’s one of the I think it may have been the oldest and, still operational one in London. Just back to the late eighteenth century. It’s a small store, but it’s just beautifully arranged, and the staff really know their books. And it has everything history, literature, mysteries, you name it. But it’s just a beautiful bookstore to go browsing, and I always come out of it intellectually richer and financially poorer sometimes by a considerable amount.

Yeah. And a guilty pleasure I have to confess is that the UK edition of some fiction books, particularly science fiction, mystery fiction are actually much nicer than the US editions.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, and just the way they’re they are presented. Now, you know, one of the course, one other kind of bookstore that’s, is increasingly difficult to find is the good used bookstore. I mean, in in I remember when I was a graduate student and had no money at all, there was this tremendous thrill of the hunt, you know, when you go into it was a part of Cambridge, which had, like, three or four quite good used bookstores, and was before the internet.

So there was no, you know, the the prices couldn’t be set in a way that was completely transparent or if they would, it’d be, real struggle. So that you had a good chance of getting a real find. And now there there there are some, I mean, second story books in Washington is very good. There’s some secondhand bookstores, but generally they have a better idea of what the market will bear. So your chance of really making off like a bandit have gone down.

Yeah. I, you know, I I had the same experience as a graduate student at at Yale. There was a place out in the countryside outside of New Haven called the Book Barn. Which was just it was what it sounded like. It was a giant barn with tons of used books, and I I remember Getting copies there of, Forest Doll’s diary, Cortell Hall’s memoirs.

I think I got William Laehy’s memoirs as well as, memoirs about the Wilson administration, Lansing, and and Joseph Tumbley.

No. I I hope today’s graduate students, they at least there are some out there who still know that pleasure because it’s lie and way, it’s analogous to going into the stacks of one of the great university libraries, which I remember, you know, being overawed by the first time I did and say, wow. This is civilization. In the same way, there was it was definitely part of the the intellectual experience to go crawling around secondhand bookstores and coming up with things you never expected, inexpensively, and then going back and just diving into them. And I I do worry a little bit sometimes that, our students today have fewer of those kinds of moments of serendipity.

Yeah. I I spent hours in the stacks, both at Cornell and Yale. And I remember one time being at the library at Cornell, and I was just looking at this kind of wall of books And out of his Carol came, Walter La fever, who was my teacher, the American diplomatic historian at at Cornell. And he looked at me and, I think I must have been a a junior at this point because I was already working with him on my senior thesis. And He said, Eric, you’re never gonna read all those books.

It was extremely deflating because I thought he had read everything.

Well, you know, I I remember none of my professors had offices in the widener stacks at Harvard. Like, Judith Schlar. And, you know, they were they were dark. They were somewhat grim. It was, you know, old oak furniture.

Lighting wasn’t great, but but again, you did have that feeling that you’re coming into some sort of temple of learning. And somehow, I mean, it’s wonderful that you can access all kinds of articles and even on through electronic media, Jay Store, what have you, there’s still something about the book

It’s true. Although I have to say the ease now of doing research and the ability to do it and not go up and find obscure journal where you’re looking for the article and see that someone has razored it out of the bound volume. It it there is, you know, something to be said for for that. So I

Oh, yeah. No. That part is that part is some form of progress for scholarship, whether it’s progress for culture.

And civilization. Yes. I agree.

And civilization is another. Okay. So let’s That’s instead of sounding as we so frequently do, like, Waldorf and Statler in the, in the muppets. What are you reading?

I am working my way through Brendan Sim’s biography of Hitler, and I’m also reading a biography of I’ve been the terrible. I can’t imagine why.

Whoa. So what do you okay. Hitler, I got, talk to me about Ivan the Terrible. Is this the one that says he wasn’t really that terrible? He was just kinda

No. No. No. It’s it’s more really about court life in the court of, the Russian kenyas, the prince, and a lot of it. It goes back to a conversation you and I had offline, not on on the show, but about an article, old article, by Ed Kean who used to teach Russian history at Harvard about Muscovite political folkways.

It’s actually it was that article that got me to decide to read something about Ivan, but how much the the foibles of the court the the kind of rules of court life. The rules of bureaucratic life in Russia, and the rules of Public life, social life among the peasantry. Not that much has changed sadly since the sixteenth century.

So that I mean, this is why it’s great to have a well educated friend. Because I remember you suggesting that article. Ed Kean was very famous Russian historian at Harvard, probably not as well known as Dick Pipes, but then he tended to write about earlier periods in Russian history. He was a somewhat less colorful figure. I think it’s fair to say.

But but you recommended that article to me. And I I dug it up immediately because whenever you’d tell me I should read something, I do. And, I thought it was make I thought it was wonderful. And I think that the key point that I took away from that one was that, you know, the czar has to appear all powerful, but in fact, he’s dealing with a bunch of boyars underneath him who are have their own, power bases are jostling with each other. And so it’s more of a balancing game.

And I thought it was a very interesting at least it raises questions about, you know, what sort of control does Putin have?

Right. Right. And, I mean, you know, some of this, of course, comes out of Putin’s constant efforts to compare himself to Peter the gray, to Ivan the Terrible, to other Russian leaders. Not so much to Nicholas the first who he, I think, actually, sort of, sort of resembles most. But But it was anyway, that’s so that’s sort of that’s what’s on my bedside table.

So on mine, I’ve been working my way through Jay Turner’s biography of Shanghai Shaq, the generalissimo. That was for my trip to Taiwan. And, it’s a very good book, I think. It’s What he’s it’s I wouldn’t say it’s a revisionist account of Shankai Shack, but but I do think Barbara Tuckman in, the stillwell papers and some other things you wrote. Did him into service by really cementing that view of Shankai Shank as somebody who was hopeless corrupt venal, incompetent, and he was anything but, I mean, he was, he was not doesn’t seem to have been personally.

Particularly corrupt although there aren’t deeply corrupt people around, but that’s, you know, that’s true of Xi Jinping too. But it really I think it it captures that fascinating period from the end of the manchu dynasty, the Cheng. All the way up through the, Chinese communist party’s takeover of the country. And you really see the difficulties that he’s wrestling with and the kind of miserable hand that he’s been dealt. Now it’s not helped by some of the people around him to be sure.

It I mean, so far what has been really reminding me is that, boy, have we, you know, China is another one that we kinda messed up. I I wouldn’t go back to who lost China. But, you know, I I do I it has got me thinking about George c Marshall convincing himself that he had solved the Chinese civil war. And, you know, the level of naivete in that, I think, is really stunning. The other book I’ve been reading is, for this book that I’m gonna be doing about Teddy Roosevelt, the last American aristocrat by a fellow named David Brown.

It’s about Henry Adams, who was a brilliant historian. His, the library of America now has two big fat volumes. His history of the United States under Jefferson and Madison, which is still in many ways an epic history. I mean, I think of your old teachers Edmond Morgan and among others said this is really probably the finest work of American historiography ever. And it is brilliantly done.

It’s interesting to see how he did it. He he had privileged access to all kinds of archives and so on. And it’s, I read it once. I’ll probably reread it again. But but I and of course, he was a, you know, he was a guy from he’s the grandson and great grandson of two presidents.

The author of what’s probably the best known memoir in the United States, the education of Henry Adams, this whole third book, clearly brilliant, you know, amazing letter writer. But I have to say the more I read about him, the more I think, what a creep is a human being. You know, he

His brother Brooks Adams was also quite weird.

His it was brother was even worse in some ways, but Henry Adams was He was an incredible snob. He thought the country was going to the dogs because of both industrialism and the rise of immigrants, rabidly anti Semitic. I mean, I I’ve been reading some of his letters, and it’s staggering the amount of he he he was so anti Semitic that even the sort of the polite anti semites of the time said, what what is it with Henry and the Jews? And I think the answer is he somehow thought the Jews embodied, modern financial capitalism. And it was also

So did Hitler according to, Brendan Simms, by the way, which is

that is a great book. It it was also utterly indifferent to the fate of American Americans. It was quite interesting because he deep down, I think he felt more sympathies with the southern gentry. Than he did with his own his own kind. So it’s, you know, what it’s making it’s but it’s well written, well documented ography.

And it it does make me reflect on the way which you could be brilliant. You could be extraordinarily you can be an extraordinarily perceptive adviser, if extraordinarily, perceptive observer of people and places, and and he was that in the Washington of his day. And really kind of So the cold and rather repellent human being with gaping blind spots. And the the one other thing, and of course, I’m I’m kind of whipping myself into a pro Teddy Roosevelt, Fuhrer. He and actually John Hay who was rose who’s a his closest friend.

And, who was Roosevelt’s secretary of state with it. They’re just they’re always patronizing Teddy Roosevelt. And you know what? Whatever his faults, and he was a bit, you know, there’s a bit of bombast there. Teddy Roosevelt, just as a human being, was like, leagues ahead of where these guys were.

In addition to being no slouch himself, I mean, I read three books a day.

He was so hyper caffeinated. I mean, I I think his consumption of caffeine was off the off the charts if I recall correctly.

Yeah. He did he did take a lot of caffeine. You know who else took in a lot of caffeine? It was Bulwark. He he would

That makes sense.

Twenty cups of coffee a day as he’s churning out, you know, father Gaurio and all those other things.

Of course, those were sort of demitases. So it’s like, it’s not like your Starbucks, you know, venti or something.

Yeah. I got okay. I’ll I’ll take that. But I think if you or I did that, you know, our here would still be standing on end, you know. So those are the things we’re Read.

What’s what’s next on your list?

What’s next on my list is something you recommended to me, which is Phillips O’Brien, how the war was won. About, World War two. And Oh,

that is a great book.

It looks fantastic.

Yeah. Just so for the listeners, what that his basic argument is the Russian front and World War II mattered a lot less than you think. The war was decided by air power, sea power, and logistics. And I, you know, I mean, he may overstate it a bit, but I think it’s a very, very powerful case. And we we need to get him on podcast.

Sure. Yeah. I’m sorry. Go ahead.

No. No. So what what’s what’s next on your list?

So I, also a World War two book. France on trial by Julian Jackson. Jackson wrote a wonderful biography of Degal, and this is about the true trial of Marshall Pateyre. After the war. And, you know, Patitan was arguably senile.

So there’s Patitan had the great hero of und who who does become a collaborator. I think that’s

Oh my god. Yes.

During the occupation, but then there’s this big public trial, but his his point as I take it is actually, you know, France itself was on trial in some way because of the challenge of dealing with collaboration. It is funny that you and I keep on going back to World War two, isn’t it?

Thanks so much, Flo, from what happened in World War II and World War One, honestly. I mean, that those are in a really seminal events, few think about things that have happened in our lifetime, the fall of of yugoslavia. I mean, that has its origins in Versailles. Iraq, the creation of Iraq as a, you know, as a nation state, you know, also, you know, as a consequence of the breakdown of the Ottoman Empire after World War one and, you know, reassignment of different, you know, parts of the Ottoman Empire to different western countries or in the, you know, in the case of Iraqibas, the Brits, till independence. So, I mean, so much of, you know, what has happened that we’re dealing with today still has, you know, its origins in in the, you know, World War one one world war two periods.

It’s it’s impossible, I think, to disentangle the two. Yeah.

I think that’s right.

I mean, for instance, we talked a lot about Nagorno Karabakh. You know, of course, the creation of Nakorno Garabakh and Nakichiban, these two exclaves, one in Azerbaijan, one in Armenia, This was the work of, you know, of Joseph Stalin when he was the nationalities commissar after World War I, trying to stitch together the Soviet Union and trying to keep various nationalities divided against one another so that, you know, Moscow could rule.

Of course, I think the other thing too is for both of us, you know, you’re just a little bit older than I am, but we both grew up in the shadow of world war two. Obviously, born after it. But that was our parents generation. That was people we knew as young people. Who had all been in it and been affected by it in different ways.

Our teachers, I mean, actually when I was in high school, I had Number of the rabbis at the Hebrew Day School, I went to it, where they were all survivors that, you know, fled Poland across Russia. One had been hidden in Berlin as a child amazingly enough. So the shadow of that was there, but I think there’s more to it than just that. I mean, at first, I think first and foremost, what you said is that it World War two and and World War one before it really set the predicate for the world we live in today. But I I think there’s something even deeper, which is, you know, World War two both wars in different ways.

I’ll just speak about world war two from them. It it reminds you, you know, evil is real. It can really happen. Fundamentally, the United States is not the big problem. I mean, we make lots of stupid mistakes.

You and I are often cataloging them in this in this podcast, but there’s real evil out there. There are evil dictators who wanna do horrible things. And if you don’t stand up to them, they don’t go away.

Okay. We promised the listeners we were gonna have a lighter note, and we’ve somehow gone to the dark side again.

So That’s a comparative statement.

So let let me ask you this. What statesman’s memoir do you kind of count as the best in your in your estimation.

So I, I would fall back on the first volume of kissinger’s memoirs. White House years. Not that it’s completely reliable, but, you know, I think it was Dean Anderson who said, you know, only a fool comes out second best in their memoir. And and kissinger’s certainly no fool. I knew it was a hatchet set.

You also read a wonderful memoir. But I think as a on two fronts. First, just as an account of statecraft, and the business of government, the business of organizing government, and so on. It it’s fantastic. But it’s also very self revealing.

Sometimes, I think unintentionally so as in his pockets of Nixon his concerns about coming in his, you know, his, the tremendous sense of wound. That’s the only way you can describe it, that he felt when his colleagues at Harvard turned against him in nineteen seventy. Over the bombing of Cambodia. It’s a heart wrenching scene, which he has actually mentioned to me on several occasions. Where a whole bunch of them who had served in the administrations that got us into Vietnam.

Come and they denounce him and Nixon, and they’re not interested in hearing the explanations And you could tell that was the moment when his connection to the university world died.

This would have been among others, Mac and Bill Bundy,

Yeah. Charlie Sykes, I think, was one.

Yeah.

Even, I think, or any May, I’m I’m I’m not mistaken.

So I, you know, look, I agree with you. I think the first I mean, all three volumes of, kissinger’s memoirs are are pretty, you know, pretty impressive. I think I mean, I’m partial, of course, because I was his special special assistant, but I think George Schultz’s memoir also is actually quite good and and somewhat neglected as a source, you know, for the Reagan Reagan years by a lot of people. But I do think honestly that Bismarck’s memoirs really are kind of for a state’s been really kind of the standard?

Really? So I I will confess. I it this is to talk about, you know, one’s feckless graduate school days. I once, picked up Bismarck’s shortly after I had taken year or two of German, I said, I know what I need to do. I need to read Bismarck’s memoirs.

In German?

In German.

Oh, okay. Well, I didn’t do that.

Then, even worse. So I picked up Irina Rowman. I think that’s what they’re called. Just memoirs or memories. By golly, they were in Frutura Shrift, you know, that old German Mhmm.

Migraine inducing script. And I took one or two stabs, and I said, I can’t do this. So I I never went back, and I never went back to a translation. Tell me tell me about that because you’re you’re probably gonna prompt me to go get a copy.

Well, because it’s, you know, something you and I have discussed We don’t have great canonical works about diplomacy the way we do about war. There’s no real equivalent of Shenza or clausewitz. But You know, kissinger’s memoirs, bismarck’s memories. These are practitioners of of the the art of diplomacy at a pretty extraordinary level. And and Bismarck in particular.

I mean, when you think about, you know, what he did, you know, between sort of, you know, eighteen, sixty and eighteen ninety. It’s it’s really pretty remarkable. You know, his firing by the Kaiser when you think about it arguably, in in some weird way was, you know, that and and, of course, letting the reinsurance treaty lapse were like, lighting a a long fuse, you know, that would ultimately explode in nineteen fourteen.

How how candid is he in the memoir?

I mean, no, I it’s hard to judge and it’s been years now since I read it, but a nice my recollection is pretty Pretty candid because he’d been fired. That always sort of brings out the candor in people I find.

Yeah. That’s true. So I will, I’ll I’ll give you a another favorite military memoir of mine in a moment. But there’s another memoir that I think, you’ve mentioned to me a number of times. So maybe you could talk a little bit about it.

Robert Murphy’s diplomat among the warriors on I’m sure that listeners have never heard of Robert Murphy. So first, you’re gonna have to explain who he was.

Yeah. So, in my book, you know, if you ask most people, like, who’s the greatest American diplomat foreign service officer, you know, I’m sure ninety percent of people would say George Cannon. But I think, you know, arguably there’s a case that it was really, Robert Murphy. And when he published diplomat among warriors. It was in the sixties.

I wanna say it was in nineteen sixty four. I think it was. It actually, was, you know, went to, like, I think number two on the best seller, the New York Times best seller list. It was a best seller quite a while. I believe it sold more copies than Kennon’s memoirs which were published which were published somewhat later.

I think Kennon’s came out in sixty eight if I’m not mistaken. It could be off. I could be off of it, you know, on on the years here, but but Murphy was a career foreign service officer He ended up being Eisenhower’s military advisor during the, invasion of North Africa and Italy. So he ended up arranging the the infamous deal with Darla. He’d been, I believe, Charje de Fair, if I’m not mistaken in, Vichy France, for a while.

And he was regarded as a, you know, sort of Vishi sympathizer, which I think is is is a bit unfair. To him, but it ended up becoming undersecretary of state in the Eisenhower Howard years, involved in all sorts of of things. I had John Nagroponte once told me that he decided to join the foreign service after reading Robert Murphy’s diplomat among warriors in in the mid nineteen mid early mid late nineteen sixties.

Another very well known American diplomat who was deputy secretary of state when, when I was at the state. Yeah. I mean, and and I think the idea is also he did spend a lot of time with the military. So he he wasn’t capable.

Yeah. And and yeah. I mean, in that sense, I felt Certainly, when we were in government, when we had provincial reconstruction teams in Iraq and in, in Afghanistan, and we had lots of we we had we were struggling to find diplomatic advisors for military commands at much lower levels than we normally do, not at the combatant commands, but, you know, lower, in the system. And, to me, that was a much more relevant memoir than Kenon’s in in that in that sense.

Hey, Kenon, I think, is he is one of these people who because he was a gifted writer, really got a reputation that was just way, way, way out of whack with what he actually did. He was also not a very nice guy.

I agree.

I mean, he was also a a bigot. All that. So my my favorite Oh, I didn’t know that. I wouldn’t have I I don’t know who would want to flander with them, but okay. I’m gonna take all types.

The the my favorite generals memoir is, William Slim defeat into victory. I don’t know if you’ve ever read that.

I have. I I read it on your recommendation, not the Burmit campaign.

Yeah. This by the way, this is the other thing our assistance would always make fun of us forward. There would be book recommendations flying back and forth across the g five as we, flew across the Atlantic. That’s a wonderful memoir because slim so, again, for benefit of our readers, at the beginning of the war, slim is a core commander in Burma as the Japanese attack, and the British just take a heck of a beating. And are driven out of Burma, and it’s not just defeat, it’s disaster.

And slim goes about rebuilding Maddie becomes the commander of fourteenth army. Sometimes known as the forgotten army, a polyglot, multi ethnic multinational army. He rebuilds morale, and he leads it with a remarkable set of operations. That take them all the way to rangoon. And I think that the thing that I find so compelling about is he is so lucid and straightforward.

I mean, his this is a guy who would, from modest means, or this is not member of the aristocracy. But he did make his, spare money when he was an impecunious officer writing stories and stuff like that. And I think that’s where he learned how to write very accurate prose. And it’s it’s the best memoir I know for helping you understand the kinds of challenges that generals have to face and how they work through them and how they think about You know, the challenges that they’ve got and how you do things like rebuild morale. I just think it’s a wonderful thing.

He also wrote a There’s a collection of short pieces, that he wrote called unofficial history in which what he does is he takes episodes in his the course of a very long military career. First, he gives you a paragraph or so from the official history. And then he says, okay, this is what it was really like, whether it was putting down a riot or being on the northwest frontier or in Iraq, and here’s what I took away from And it’s, again, it’s simple and straightforward, but it’s just brilliant and beautiful.

I guess I have a very conventional, you know, uninspiring military memoir, you know, to choose, which is Grant’s memoir. Just because I think Grant is such an underrated character and because I know he smoked a box of cigars a day, and he was suffering from, as a cigar smoker myself. He was so suffering from cancer towards the end as he was writing it, desperate to try and generate, you know, money for his for his family, but it’s it’s really quite remarkable. And I think he’s a very underrated, character.

There there’s a terrific, annotated version of that that put out by somebody we had on the podcast, Elizabeth Samut. Which is really good. I mean, she did a very, very thorough scholarly job of presenting that. You know, when I read it though, I have to confess I didn’t find it as insightful as I had hoped. It was, I mean, completely clear and compelling.

So it’s, I mean, it’s a good memoir. I agree with you, but you with you about him as a human being. By the way, the other thing is Henry slowed grant. He he’s, you know, he had met, of course, Henry Adams had met, he’s a very young man. He had met Lincoln because his father was going off be the minister to, the Court of Saint James.

And he said, you know, when you saw Grant in the same chair that Lincoln had sat in, it convinced him that Darwin was wrong. And but you’re right. And, you know, among other things grant on reconstruction is very interesting. And Grant was much more predisposed to really put up a fight for the rights of the freedmen. In the wake of a was a, you know, really, you know, brutal campaign on part of unreconstructed South.

Speaking of which, there’s, I don’t know if you have you read any of the volumes in the Oxford history of the United States?

Yes.

There’s some wonderful ones. So Richard White, his volume of the republic for which it stands. Which is really about from the end of the civil war up to about the Spanish American war. I think it is excessively dark. But having stipulated that, it really does rub your nose in in the amount of domestic violence there was, the lynchings, the, you know, intimidation, the strength.

Street breaking. Yeah. A lot of labor violence.

A lot of labor also and a lot of racial violence. A lot of racial violence, intended to keep, African Americans down. And it’s, like I said, I think it’s a bit over the top not over the top. I think it’s unbalancing that, you know, doesn’t talk about the Brooklyn Bridge or American literature or, you know, there are a whole bunch of things where they’re hopeful. Or positive things, and he doesn’t seem to be interested in that.

But that said, it’s a it’s a very, very confidently executed history, which is really quite instructive.

You know, it’s interesting you mentioned that I have not read that particular volume in in the Oxford history, but You know, I am I’m not surprised. I mean, I that period of time has always fascinated me. It actually one of two books, which just made an enormous impact on me intellectually as a PhD student in history. Was, origins of the new south by Sevan Bulwark, who was my, my teacher at at Yale. Who’s, like, at that time was probably the Dean of American historians, and it’s it’s a great book.

It’s in the Louisiana State University history of the South series. And it covers from the end of reconstruction. The the compromise of eighteen seventy seven to about to through the or to the beginning of the or middle of the progressive period to about, nineteen twelve or so, I guess, to, you know, Wilson’s election. It’s a bit of a I mean, it was written in the I can’t I think the early fifties, if I’m not mistaken, maybe late forties, but it sort of represents in my view the acme of the of sort of the beardsian progressive history of the United States, you know, a a lot of emphasis on, it’s not a Marxist view, but it’s it’s very much a view of the economic interests that various classes in the South had and how they manage to solidify, you know, the dominance of of the what was the Southern ruling class, you know, in the late nineteenth century and how they disfranchised, not just black voters, but also poor white voters in order to to to do it.

You know, that that view really had a a grip for a long time on how people wrote about history. And, you know, I I would, alas, I would now willingly trade that for the, interpreting everything through the lens of identity.

Race class gender. Right?

Grace. I I mean, I I think they’re, you know, it’s so easy to mix miss the complexity of of human beings. Do you reread books much?

Life is so short. That I find myself having difficulty justifying doing it to myself because there’s so many books in so little time.

Yeah. I I guess I’m not I’m a little bit different. Maybe it just, have mired in nostalgia, but I don’t think so. I think with the great works, you really you you find new things in them. So I’ve One of my all time favorites is Winston Churchill’s biography of the Duke of Marlboro.

Oh, yeah. Terrible is laughing times, which is you know, as I think it was Leo Strata said, you know, this is actually a treatise in statecraft, which is really what it is. I mean, it’s it’s an incredible book. And I began rereading it, and it’s it stands up really well, and it’s really wonderful. And, you know, then they’re the classics like Given, and, I I recently reread war and peace.

And That was also really quite powerful going back to that. It’s it’s quite quite an incredible story.

I don’t read as much fiction as I should. I mean, I I

Well, I I can’t tell you. I I read a whole lot. I read, a while back, it’s new orhan Palmok. It’s no longer new. What is it called?

The plague?

Oh, yeah.

Do you know which one that is? I think I think that’s it. It’s Yeah. It’s a very interesting sort of somewhat strange book because it’s It it it’s told as if it was a history. But he’s makes up a completely fictional island.

And it it’s I think it’s very effective. And it’s a it’s a actually, I think you might like it because it’s it’s a picture. It’s knights of plague. That’s a knights of plague. It’s it’s a picture of the Ottoman Empire as it’s decaying.

And, you know, there’s This whole town, Abil Hamid, there’s different functionalities, there are the local Jonathan Last. Again, this is all he’s doing this with an island that doesn’t exist in the middle of the Mediterranean. But I thought it was quite a powerful evocation of a moment, which I found pretty compelling.

I haven’t read it. I’ve read other others of his novels His brother, by the way, is a very accomplished Turkish economic historian.

Oh, really? I had no idea.

Yeah. Yeah. He written quite quite a bit about, Turkish economic history, ottoman economic history. He’s very very impressive, impressive family.

As as long as we’re in that part of the world, I read recently Tom Seggev’s the first Israelis. Second was a journalist, but he’s really at this point sort of as much an historian. It is a phenomenal book. It’s a book about, me the year after the creation of the state of Israel and just all the different groups and all the kind of struggles and difficulties, and it really, you know, it makes you amazed that they were able to pull this, off. And I think, you know, the main reason is because they they had quite extraordinary leadership, not just Benorian, but, you know, whole clutch of people, around him who made plenty of mistakes, let it be said.

But, you know, almost by sheer force of will, managed to weld a nation out of some very very unlikely components. So let me ask a different question. Do you what multi volume Bulwark, you have sitting on your shelves that you haven’t read, but you just find it comforting, half it there, having it there. Multi volume Bulwark. Or it could be a single volume, but somehow For reassurance purposes, I think multi volume works better.

Yeah. Multi volume

Well, I mean, one multi volume set that I’ve had on my bookshelf for years, which I, you know, have wanted to read, but have never actually read is Daniel Bourston’s the Americans. The three volumes.

Oh, yeah. That made a huge splash when it came out.

Yeah. I was in and when I was in graduate school, you know, a lot of, people read. I just never kinda got around, you know, around to it, but But I have it, you know, and someday by god, I will read it. I mean, the the other thing I kind of cherish that I haven’t read yet is a copy of Lord Sharnwood’s biography of Lincoln.

Oh, it’s worth doing, and it’s a quick read.

Yeah. I mean, I can read almost endlessly about Lincoln. One of my favorite books is T. Harry Williams Lincoln, yeah, finds a general. Yeah.

Which is you know, tremendous. And it it but I literally, you know, I never find myself bored reading about him because he’s just such a remarkable, incredible figure.

You know, it’s a wonderful, book about him is the the original mammoth biographies by Nicklian Hanks. John Nick. John.

The two volumes by his Secret Podcast. No.

It’s like eight or ten.

Oh, is it eight? Is it that one?

Oh, it’s I think it’s eight. Oh, okay.

Because it’s a life in letters. Right? Isn’t it also his life? Yeah.

I mean, it yeah. I mean, that was the style that you did in the nineteenth century. You have extensive quotations from letters and stuff and speeches. But, of course, they were his Secret Podcast and they, you know, effectively were living in the White House. And You know, they knew him well, but they were also both quite rigorous in how they did it.

And I think it’s a portrait of him It’s still I mean, I’m sure we’ll get angry American historians writing to us. I think it’s still stands and it kinda captured him. Now they were, of course, they were young men, and there were there’s an element of hero worship in this, but, you know, that’s in the case of Lincoln. I think that’s entirely understandable. So my, comforting multi volume work going back to World War two are the British official histories of the second World War.

So there’s a grand strategy series is a Europe series of Middle East. There’s a phenomenal war at sea series by Steven Roscoe, who is a fantastic Naval historian who himself had been a naval officer. There’s, the history of intelligence during the second world war. And the the first, they’re, they are still very interesting, even the ones that were produced in the fifties and sixties. But I think they for me, they stand out as a product of remarkable time.

I don’t think anybody will ever do that again because what the Brits did, is they got some of the top historians in the world writing them. So, for example, the the strategic bombing offensive volumes. It’s Noble Franklin and Charles Webster, who in the webster wrote a, I think, biography of Pomeriston, if I’m not mistaken. I think I was read about Castle Ray. You know, you’d go to Michael Howard, read one of the volumes in the intelligence history, greatest English military historian.

There was I mean, they’re just the and the Americans did something similar to, and in both cases, although there’s some punches that are pulled. And, obviously, there’s some stuff that was suppressed because of, particularly anything associated with sigint, signals intelligence. They were remarkably candid on the whole. And the British, I think, were ahead of the Americans, in not simply going service by service. So for example, the history of the Middle East is a it’s a multi service history of the war in the Middle East.

And I think that’s whereas the United States, you had the army green book is

the recall. Right. Military Center for military history.

They the navy had similarly Morrison write this incredible and

multi volume. Yeah.

System volumes. Actually, the Air Force history isn’t all that bad, but but still doing it by services, you know, does

You get you get the stove pipe. You don’t get the full picture.

So again, maybe I’m, you know, this is an embodiment of nostalgia for a better time. Although, There’s still some great stuff. The, people I think frequently don’t realize the German official history of world war two is extraordinary, and that’s really only been published the last less than fifty years.

Right. Yeah. No. I’ve I’ve dipped into both the, British and American official histories for my own research when I was doing my dissertation, but I cannot, you know, cannot say I’ve read them, you know, all the way through, but they are remarkable.

Yeah. Is there a period that you find?

There’s a I mean, there’s a very good case for official history, which I think Again, we’re gonna get angry, you know, letters from, you know, from historians, but, Ernie May once wrote, a an essay, which I I I cannot recall the title completely, but it was in a volume of the Warren Center at Harvard’s perspectives on American history, and I think it was entitled to me, like, the case for court history, which will really excite a lot of angry people. But, there is something, you know, to that. I mean, to be able to capture you know, not just what’s written on the documents, because as you and I know, the documents are important, but they can also be deceptive.

Yeah. Oh, I I completely agree with that. It’s also true at, you know, at a lower level as well. Some of the best volumes in the US Army’s history were over two. There’s one written Charlie Sykes Mcdonald, who I think was a infantry company commander, and he’s writing about some of the fighting in the Herkin Forest and places like that.

And there’s the perspective, you know, somebody having the perspective of a very low level officer who’d served as an infantry officer during the war was was quite, was quite helpful. And, you know, made those a great work. I don’t think I don’t think people get the free rein, that they got back then. There’s a great

just a massive material. I think, you know, it it’s gonna be very difficult for people to to manage. And I I think I’ve thought for some time that we’re gonna end up having kind of bifurcated kinds of historians. We’re gonna have some who are gonna do a deep dive into some record groups, you know, the millions and millions of pages of some record groups, whether it’s the state department or defense department or others, and do monographs very narrow on those subjects. And then we’re gonna have to have his historians who are good at synthesis who can take all those monographs and and have enough familiarity with the primary sources to be able to put them into the monographs all in some kind of larger context, but I I really think it’s gonna be very difficult for anybody to have the kind of mastery of all the primary sources and the secondary sources to to write about contemporary stuff?

Well, and then, you know, the the advantage that the World War two historians had is captured the other side’s records.

That too.

You know, and when, I mean, there’s still some good books like Michael Oren’s history of the nineteen sixty seven war, which I think do a very good job. He was able to do a bit of interviewing and so on in some of the Arab countries, but not all of them. But, you know, I I don’t think anybody’s gonna get access to the Syrian archives or probably the Egyptian archives. And there was this brief moment of opening where you could get into the Russian archives. A little bit the Chinese archives.

You know, there’s interesting writing about Korean war, that taps Chinese archives. I think but again, that was a product of a particular moment in time when there was a an opening particularly when they wanted to, you know, put Maum in more of his place. And so the military commander, Pung to Y, gets a bit more praise, which he he absolutely he absolutely deserved. But I think, you know, those those things have closed down now. And, you know, I doubt that anybody’s gonna get those.

Unfortunately.

So we have to wrap up. We’re coming to the end of our time. So Let me ask you, what in the end of the day is your favorite work of history? I know that’s a hard one.

Boy, that’s a really that’s a really hard one. I mean, I have so many. You know, I have this interest in early American history. And, there’s a bunch of books there, which I love going back to. And now here’s one that I talk about angry emails.

You know, Frances Parkman, I think, was a radically underestimated history in the nineteenth century. You know, he writes this massive multi volume work on the contest between Britain and France for North America. And it’s it is not fashionable to say a nice word about Parkman, because you know, he didn’t like the French. He didn’t like the Indians. People forget.

He didn’t like, you know, Bostonians either. Because he was one. He didn’t like the breads. He didn’t like many people. He wrote it under tremendous, pressure because he was you know, debilitatingly, near blind, and it’s a heroic effort.

But he did it was multi archival work. I mean, he’s working in French, as well as in English. And what his gift is a, you know, he’s dismissed as a romantic Stortons, I suppose so he was. His is an amazing gift for evoking the landscape that he’s writing about. And, apparently, that’s because he spent a lot of time to go to enough state, New York, which is one of my favorite places.

But but he evokes the time and the, the natural landscape, which most historians don’t, I think, really feel modern historians don’t feel quite as obliged to do. To describe. Mhmm. Yeah. You know, other than that, I’m You know me.

I mean, I’m hopelessly besotted by Churchill. Not his world war two memoirs, although the first volume of those is is still interesting. But some of his own works like, the Marlborough, his world war one memoirs, and then you know, some of the books about him, which I you talk you know, you’re saying my Lincoln is endlessly fascinating. That’s how I how I feel about Churchill. How do I feel about Churchill?

What about you?

So I have to tell a story here. So My favorite work of history actually is by one of my other teachers, Donald Kagan’s, on the origins of war and the preservation of peace. And at one point, I was having a discussion with secretary, of defense Bob Gates who was then my boss. Who had just met Fred and Kim Kagan, our friends and colleagues at the Institute for the study of war out in Baghdad. Of course, he knew about Bob Kagan, who we’ve had on the podcast.

He also knew Bob’s wonderful wife, Toria Newland, now the undersecretary of state for political affairs. And he said to me, how many of these Kagans, you know, are there anyway? And, I said, well, I think you’ve met them all now. And he then said, and he had just come out of being, you know, the president of Texas A and M University. He said, I think Don Kagan’s, you know, on the origins of war is the single best work of history I have ever read.

And I looked at him and I said, I was a teaching assistant in the course that became that book

Oh, what a great what a great tale. Well, you know, this actually this was this was a lot of fun. I I think One thing my my, kids now quote back at me because they’re quoting them to their children. So I always used to tell them If you you should always have a book with you, and like you, I am paranoid about going anywhere, and I do mean things like the metro. Without having a book.

And because I what I said was with if you have a book, you’ll never be alone. You’ll never be bored. And I think that’s, That’s true. And, you know, I sometimes fear what will happen when we no longer have the same kind of culture of the book that you and I grew up with. I hope that’s I hope that’s not the case.

But, you know, again, and maybe we’re getting dark again. You know, when you grew up where there were fewer distractions, books were it.

Yeah. I mean, it’s not quite the same thing. You know, cuddling up with your kindle when you go to bed at night. So

No. Although I have one, and it’s,

It has its uses.

It has its it definitely has its uses.

Well, on that note, we’ll end this episode of shield of the Republic. I think we’ll probably return to to books at some point in the future, we kind of barely scratched the surface on fiction. Yeah, but it’s been, been a fun, fun hour to spend with you LA and as always.

Yeah. Well, same here and happy reading.