Two History Book Recommendations
Here are two history-book recommendations from Three Hierarchies:
7. The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny, by Victor Davis Hanson.
One of Hanson’s several books arguing for a “Western way of warfare” that grows out of egalitarian democracy and an instrumental, secular view of government. Davis illustrates this through the campaigns of Epaminondas of Boeotia against Sparta, William Tecumseh Sherman against the Confederate South, and George Patton against Nazi Germany. He sees them all as parallel: generals commanding an army of citizen soldiers, whose aim was not just to defeat but to tear up by the roots the whole racial caste system of the societies they opposed, who all hated above all else the idea of a battle of attrition, who were controversial at home for the radicalism of their war-making, and who after the war fell into disgrace, before being recognized posthumously as architects of victory. The story of Epaminondas is particularly interesting, as Hanson makes a good case that this Theban general was central to Greek history, yet almost unknown compared to mad tyrants like Alexander the Great. I’d maybe be a little more ambivalent about these guys’ legacy than Hanson is, but this is a superb bit of military history, that really shows you the continuity of Western civilization.
8. William the Silent : William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, 1533-1584, by C.V. Wedgewood.
Another unfortunately out of print item, this is one of the most moving biographies I have ever read. William the Silent is a charming, easy-going, and soft-hearted Catholic ladies man of Lutheran background, who is gradually drawn into the defense of the defenseless Protestants of the Netherlands against the pitiless Inquisition of Phillip II and his agent Alva. Written in World War II you can see where C.V. (Cicely Veronica) Wedgewood’s sympathies lie: Phillip and his Catholic persecutors are the Nazis, the ultimate enemy, the Calvinists are the Communists, obnoxious, close-minded, doctrinaire, but the core of the underground resistance, while William the Silent and the Lutherans are like the British, a bit slow to react, not very disciplined, more concerned with humanity than abstract doctrines, but in the end the hope of civilization. Well, not exactly confessional, but in William the Silent C.V. Wedgewood paints a powerful, believable portrait of what a national leader should be.