While Jonathan Shay’s connections between Vietnam and Homer’s literature of war are one way of exploring the perennial risk of psychological injuries in war, the history of another country’s wars and experiences might offer a promising avenue of approach. Canadian historian Adam Montgomery’s book should thus be of interest to a wider audience than its subtitle alone might suggest. While students of Canadian military history will welcome it as a concise history of psychological injury and treatment in Canada’s wars since 1914, Montgomery usefully broadens the scope of the discussion. American readers, understandably preoccupied with the U.S. experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, will find the treatment of an allied and culturally similar military illuminating. Montgomery’s findings point to the startling ubiquity of psychological injuries in military operations of all types.
#Reviewing Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America
While some might see chaplains as anachronistic, or even as an affront to the principle of separation of church and state, Ronit Stahl, a scholar of modern American social history, argues the military chaplaincy has been and continues to be a driver of change in American religion and society. Given the perennial argument over whether the United States military should or should not be a social laboratory, Stahl’s book invites fresh consideration of the connections between military and society.
#Reviewing Somme: Into The Breach
Hugh Sebag-Montefiore took advantage of the Somme’s centenary year to publish "Somme: Into the Breach," a weighty and well-documented volume privileging the voices and accounts of the men who fought it. He uses letters and diaries to resurrect the combatants as real men, husbands and fathers, while showing us unflinchingly how they suffered and died.
#Reviewing All The Ways We Kill and Die
Castner has written a compelling account of how particular technologies put their stamp on a certain kind of war. In going far beyond that, to explore the human dimensions and costs of that war, and to point to the possibility of hope and resilience for its veterans, Castner’s achievement is as much literary as it is a technical. All The Ways We Kill and Die offers insight both into the ways that wars can be fought, and how they may be survived.