A Proposal to Reduce Political Partisanship In Uniform
Military members have to walk a line between their own political beliefs and what the State asks of them as members of the profession of arms. In principle, it […]
Book Review: The Vimy Trap (2016) by Ian McKay and Jamie Swift
Hello! I am trying to get this blog back into service as part of my ongoing professional military development. This is a book review that I submitted to the Canadian […]
Generations In Uniform: The Rise Of An Hereditary Military Caste
Lt. Col. Shawn McKinstry of the Canadian Army Reserve shows a picture of his great-grandfather with his regiment from the First World War. Photo credit here. My father, like his […]
War And Remembrance: Notes Towards A Taxonomy Of Contemporary War Literature
For a long time it was TGWOT – The Global War on Terror, the term for the US led conflict that officially began on September 11, 2001, though one could […]
Diet, Fitness and Military Readiness: Connecting the Dots
Last week was an example of how two different news stories , while not directly connected, can nevertheless invite, even scream for, side by side comparison. The first was this […]
Miitary Writers On The Value Of Fiction
I just noticed this slightly dated (14 Feb 2017) on the Modern War Institute of West Point website about a panel of writers speaking on the value of writing fiction. The […]
Book Review: David Finkel, Thank You For Your Service
David Finkel, Thank You For Your Service. Toronto: Bond Street Books, 2013. I am slowly working my way through a stack of books about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan […]
War and Memory: The Example of Fromelles
An excellent piece on the War on the Rocks blog this week offers some interesting comments on the social and cultural rationales for war memorials. Fought on 19 July, 1916, […]
Book Review: Annie Jacobsen’s The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA
The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America’s Top Secret Military Research Agency (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015). Annie Jacobsen Since 1958, DARPA, the […]
Three Journalists Reflect On Covering Today’s Wars
This interview between War on the Rocks’ editor Ryan Evans and three working journalists – Nancy Yousseff, David Wood and Paul Shinkman is well worth listening to. The three discuss […]