Restricted Data

It seems that there are really two flavors of war these days. One is what we might call “war from above,” which involves getting quite literally above the people you’re trying to make war on, and dropping nasty things on them that blow them up. The other is what we might call “war from below,” in which involves blowing up people from an eye-level vantage point, and usually with somewhat more mundane weapons, like cars stuffed with homemade explosives. Two of my favorite “history of war” books dwell on each end of this extreme.

On the grand subject of “war from above,” Sven Lindqvist’s A History of Bombing (New York: New Press, 2001), is fairly unknown amongst bomb scholars, in my experience, but immensely interesting. It’s an unusual book to say the least. The structure is something like a long, discursive timeline, with each entry numbered. You can read it front-to-back, which is fine enough, or, alternatively, the author offers up selective entry paths that lead to the development of different themes. It’s sort of a mixture of Choose Your Own Adventure with non-fiction history. While I am generally not a huge fan of “experimental” works of history, this one actually works for me. I picked it up on a whim at a used bookstore awhile back, and was surprised at how much I found it both interesting and compelling.

Read the full post »