The Soldier, the Builder, & The Diplomat by Steven Schlesser

£11.99
Available
Product Ref. (e.g. ISBN, SKU)
9781951082260
Published:
12 Oct 2023
Format:
Paperback
Number of pages:
cm pages
Dimensions:
229x152x12mm
Weight:
0.286kgs
Contemporary readers, who wonder at the British and American knack for misguided adventure, will enjoy these three essays on Custer, the Titanic, and the onset of World War I. 

Contemporary readers, who wonder at the British and American knack for misguided adventure, will enjoy these three essays on Custer, the Titanic, and the onset of World War I.

The American adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have finally wound down after incurring enormous costs. One wonders if we have forgotten the lessons of history, and in particular of World War I? It is far easier to enter into armed conflict than it is to withdraw the troops and heal the wounds.

The Soldier, the Builder, and the Diplomat consists of rapier-like literary thrusts into the lives of General George Armstrong Custer, Thomas Andrews (the builder of the Titanic), and Edward Grey (British Foreign Secretary before World War I.

However spectacular their failures, it's generally agreed that these men (or, in the case of Edward Grey, the men around him) could have avoided disaster except for arrogance - a flaw that has long characterized the imperial ambition of leaders from both countries.

One shudders to think where such a mentality will take us in a nuclear age.

Steven Schlesser's readable study is more than entertainment or scholarship, it is a plea for balance, probity, and reason in an era when a single fit of arrogance by a world leader can devastate hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings and imperil the very project of civilized human existence on this planet.

It's difficult to overstate the importance of The Soldier, the Builder, and the Diplomat.

About the Author: Steven Schlesser was born in Portland in 1957 and attended public high school there.  He graduated from Claremont McKenna College in 1980 and then spent the following year as a newspaper reporter at The Valley Herald in Milton-Freewater Oregon. From 1981 until 1984 he attended Vermont Law School in South Royalton, Vermont, earning his JD. Following a short stint as a law clerk, Schlesser joined his father to help run the family business, Schlesser Company Inc., which prefinished mouldings for the manufactured housing industry.  Currently, Schlesser makes his living as a supplier for this same industry and as a broker for tiny home manufacturers.  Since 1987 he has written a monthly newsletter called The Schlesser Review.   

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