Zelanator reviewed The last full measure by Michael Stephenson
Review of 'The last full measure' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Impulse purchase on Ibooks a while back. Overall, I was not all that impressed with the book. Stephenson is certainly a great writer and his judicious use of quotes and extended passages from soldiers' letters, diaries, and memoirs illustrates the chaos of battle across time. At a certain point when reading this book, though, one begins to wonder "What's the point?" because after discussing the American Civil War, Stephenson mostly presents a series of snapshots about battle from various colonial conflicts, World War I and II, and a mixture of Vietnam/Iraq 2003/ Afghanistan. Making matters worse, Stephenson did not include a conclusion that could wrap the book up neatly for the reader.
If you have read John Keegan's Face of Battle, you will understand Stephenson's premise of studying "Death in battle through the ages." He, like Keegan, tries to draw on particular soldiers' accounts or any on-the-ground perspective to make …
Impulse purchase on Ibooks a while back. Overall, I was not all that impressed with the book. Stephenson is certainly a great writer and his judicious use of quotes and extended passages from soldiers' letters, diaries, and memoirs illustrates the chaos of battle across time. At a certain point when reading this book, though, one begins to wonder "What's the point?" because after discussing the American Civil War, Stephenson mostly presents a series of snapshots about battle from various colonial conflicts, World War I and II, and a mixture of Vietnam/Iraq 2003/ Afghanistan. Making matters worse, Stephenson did not include a conclusion that could wrap the book up neatly for the reader.
If you have read John Keegan's Face of Battle, you will understand Stephenson's premise of studying "Death in battle through the ages." He, like Keegan, tries to draw on particular soldiers' accounts or any on-the-ground perspective to make broader claims about the universals and particulars of warfare. However, Keegan does a better job in Face of Battle selecting battles that had a rich source base and also illustrated something fundamentally changing about the nature of warfare generally. Stephenson, on the other hand, does not have any grand thesis or point he wishes to emphasize other than the grotesque and macabre ways in which men have died in battle. Stephenson tires to illuminate a) the chaos of battle b) the various dangers and privations soldiers faced and c) how men die. If that doesn't sound profound, you may be cluing into what I didn't like about this book.
Stephenson also unconsciously or consciously bifurcates warfare into "heroic" (almost anything prior to 1900) and "unheroic" (almost anything after World War II). He backs these claims up by selectively quoting from various soldiers who attest to either perspective. In doing so, Stephenson falls into old tropes wherein military historians pigeonhole and stereotype soldiers in "heroic" and "victim" molds that, while making for a tidy narrative, glaze over the many complexities of human experience in war.
3/5 (60)
