Back in June the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College chose my book The Hard Hand of War as "the book of the conference," meaning that all participants were asked to read it and a round table was convened specifically to discuss it. That was a real honor and one I much appreciated.
Recently CSPAN-3 aired the roundtable. Panelists included Susannah Ural, Keith Bohannon, Megan Kate Nelson, Brooks Simpson, and myself. The whole thing is a bit over an hour in length, but for my money the most delightful moment in it occurred when Megan remarked that the book was almost twenty years old, was still a standard work on the subject, and that it was "unusual for a book to have that kind of shelf life. . . . It's like a Twinkie. It's still fresh." I've never considered Twinkies to be exactly fresh, but they are certainly timeless. I'm confident that they will survive a nuclear conflict, global warming, or pretty much any other calamity. So it was really a very nice compliment.
Blog Them Out of the Stone Age: Toward A Broader Vision of Military History and National Security Affairs
