My review of William Pfaff's The Bullet's Song
My review of William Pfaff's The Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia was published last year in The American Conservative but hasn't been available online. Apparently these guys have made that happen. Thanks! And since I think that the book is worth reading, I'm posting the review here: When we recall the very violent 20th century that spanned from the start of the Great War to the end of the Cold War—the short 20th century, as British historian Erica Hobsbawm dubbed it—the names that come to mind are those of the leading monsters who masterminded the mass murders of that era (Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tsetung) and the buffoons (Hermann Goring, Nikita Khrushchev), serial killers (Heinrich Himmler), and rapists (Lavrenty Beria) who played supporting roles. We sit through this long horror movie, which opens with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914 and ends with the scene of the collapsing Berlin Wall in 1989, and we feel a ...