Ep 060 "The Military Historian's Craft: Past Tense Imperfect"

Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare Podcast

I am an un-credentialed amateur historian who has done very little archive work and lack the substantial infrastructure credentialed historians have to practice their craft. I have debated esteemed historians and won on stage (Daniel Walker Howe looked at my CV and did not prepare) but that doesn't make me better than them.

I think my various detours in life mostly outside the formal academy gives me a unique insight into how history works and why I think I am more sober than university historians.

I describe some of the reasons I do it and the techniques I employ to get the single most accurate picture of what happened then to determine what's going on now.

I am the Smedley D. Butler Fellow for Military Affairs at the Libertarian Institute.

Recommended Reading:

Mortimer Adler How To Read a Book

Robert Strassler The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika (Landmark Series)

Mike Snook How Can Man Die Better: The Secrets of Isandlwana Revealed

Mike Snook Like Wolves on the Fold: The Defence of Rorke’s Drift

David Stahel Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East

David Hackett Fischer Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought

Keith Windschuttle The Killing of History

John Burrow A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century

Harry Elmer Barnes A History of Historical Writing

US Army Center of Military History

My Substack

Email at [email protected]