Cartledge, despite the above quotation, is not an Alexander-worshipper but a realist or a mild skeptic, rejecting hyperbole and hidden agendas in the ancient sources, which he discusses in detail, along with the more extreme portraits painted of Alexander by modern historians, such as "...the titantic and Fuhrer-like Alexander of Fritz Schachmeyer". Cartledge's Alexander is a military genius and an inspirational visionary to be sure, but his icy ruthlessness of calculated murder of potential opponents and superannuated followers like Callisthenes or Parmenion is never far away. Cartledge uses the term "purges" several times in the text and it is appropriate; Alexander, with his suspicions aroused, had the same irrevocable instinct for savage reprisal as did Joseph Stalin. Alexander running through Cleitus the Black with a spear in the midst of a banquet, a man who had saved Alexander's life, or who ordered the destruction of Thebes was the same Alexander who honored the religions and customs of his conquered subjects and tried to build his Overlordship of Asia on a fusion of Pan-Hellenism and ancient Persia:

"Alexander's importation and integration of oriental troops into the Macedonian army was a crucial and controversial issue. by the end of 328 he had units of Sogdian and bactrian cavalry, so presumably he was drawing also upon the excellent cavalry of western and central Iran. In 327 he recruited more than thirty thousand young Iranians. Since Greek was to be the lingua franca of the new Empire, replacing the use of the Achaemenids use of Aramaic, he arranged for them to be taught the Greek language as well as the demonstrably supeior Macedonian infantry tactics. when they arrived at Susa in 324, he hailed them as ' successors' - to the Macedonian soldiers understandable consternation" [ 204 ]

Cartledge discusses Alexander's generalship and his abilities as an adaptive military innovator, building on a his father Philip's original military reforms or improvising when faced with unexpected difficulties at river crossing or in siege warfare. He misses though an opportunity to explain the dreadful effectiveness in Alexander's hands of the Macedonian phalanx, a more heavily armed, lightly armored, mobile and deadly version of the original Greek Hoplite formation. While Alexander and his cavalry garnered most of the glory, the ordinary Macedonian phalanx cut through Persian ranks like an implacable meat grinder, mowing down enormous numbers of the enemy and trodding their dead and dying bodies underfoot. Understandably though, this is a biography of Alexander and not a history of his wars but the real scale of the slaughter Alexander inflicted is given far less attention than the skill with which he inflicted it, or his political and religious policies that came in their wake.

Alexander's religious sentiments and his mysticism, which spilled over in to his political vision for Asia and for himself as a semi-divine ruler are given much consideration by Cartledge, ranging from his at a distance dealings with subject state Athens, to his "contracting" a relationship with the Egyptian god Ammon, to his ideation with Achilles as a model for himself. There appears to have been something of a feedback loop between Alexander's military acheivments, which were truly superhuman, and his growing religious superstitions, both of which fed a kind of megalomania according to Cartledge, and led to Alexander's unsuccessful demand that his Greek and Macedonian soldiers adopt proskynesis in the Persian style. A more or less blasphemous act of hubris ( though not quite absolutely, as Cartledge explains, given the precedent of the deification of Lysander) that led to a break between Alexander and his most loyal followers. This craving for divinity later was expanded posthumously to fabulous extremes in the traditions of the Alexander Romance, where Alexander the Great becomes a symbolic and heavily mythologized figure for dozens of peoples and regimes. Alexander himself began cultivating the myths.

Cartledge has done an excellent job demystifying one of the archetypal figures of Western history, the man whom other would-be world conquerors had to measure themselves against - reportedly, Julius Caesar wept in despair because Alexander's glory was beyond his reach. He has also brought out the extent to which Alexander saw himself not as a Westerner, or a Hellene, but as a bridge to the East, a synthesizer of civilizations.

Labels: Academic history, Alexander the Great, books, History, Intellectuals, military history, Popular history

Command of USAF base in Thailand during the Vietnam War

Original USAF “Top Gun”

Author of the official USAF Aerial Attack Study

Creator of the E-M Theory (which led to the design of the F-16 and F-18)

Creator of the OODA Loop

Cognitive theorist for a ” dialectical engine” of learning in his paper, Destruction and Creation

Inspiration for the development of USMC ” Maneuver Warfare” doctrine

A foremost authority on the lessons learned from 2400 years of military history, distilled in two mega-briefs entitled Patterns of Conflict and A Discourse on Winning and Losing

A major inspiration for the later development of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) theory and to a lesser extent, influenced concepts such as Network-centric Warfare (NCW) among others.

A leader of the "military reform movement" that challenged Pentagon spending priorities, excessive budget size, seedy relationships with defense contractors, dysfunctional weapons systems and rigged testing systems.

A key influence on the war plan of the first Gulf War in 1991. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, USMC General Charles C. Krulak wrote: "The Iraqi Army collapsed morally and intellectually under the onslaught of American and Coalition forces. John Boyd was an architect of that victory as surely as if he’d commanded a fighter wing or a manuever division in the desert”.

Ironically, Boyd died in 1997 not only in relative obscurity but as a virtual pariah to the U.S. Air Force he served for decades, where he remains persona non grata to the senior brass to this day. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently invoked Boyd's memory in a high profile speech, in part, to drive home his deep dissatisfaction with the leadership of the Air Force ( juxtaposed with his firing of the Secretary of the Air Force and the Chief of Staff). A second irony, Boyd, at least judging by the public stance taken by all of his closest collaborators, would have been aghast at the second Iraq War - though he probably would have also admired how Petraeus managed to arrest the downward strategic spiral.

Colonel Boyd's reputation and ideas were introduced to the general public by Robert Coram and Grant Hammond but it fell to Frans Osinga to undertake a meticulous reconstruction of Boyd's evolution as a strategic thinker by systematically digesting Boyd's personal papers, copious briefing slides and voluminous collection of books, all of which were heavily marked up with furiously scrawled marginalia and dealt as with physics, mathematics, cybernetics and philosophy as much as they did military history. Dr. Osinga's prodigious tome, Science Strategy and War is a tour de force of 20th century intellectual history as well as an exposition of Boyd's strategic thought.

The online symposium on Science, Strategy and War included Colonel Osinga and attracted the attention of the publisher of Nimble Books, W.F. Zimmerman, who wanted to re-cast the discussion as a collection of essays. The authors included Dr. Chet Richards ( an associate and collaborator on the mathematical aspects of Boyd's theories), Daniel Abbott, Shane Deichman, Frank Hoffman, Adam Elkus, "Lexington Green", Thomas Wade and Dr. Frans Osinga, who contributed several essays. Dr. Thomas Barnett sets the intellectual tone in the foreword after which the authors brought a wide range of professional perspectives to bear - cognitive psychology, military history, physics, strategy, journalism and, of course, blogging - in a series of articles that tried to explain the essence and dimensions of John Boyd’s contribution to strategic thought. Hopefully, we made things clearer or easier to a reader approaching the subject for the first time.

A brief comment regarding Nimble Books: Progressive Historians has many academic and "popular" historians and writers in their readership and on the roster - I'd like to point out that Nimble is a wonderful publisher for first-time or experienced niche authors. The level of personal attention is high and the working relationship is very collegial, which might be the right venue for those with eminently publishable monographs banging their heads against the wall of the slower moving academic press. I give them my highest recommendation.

Labels: books, Frans Osinga, Intellectuals, John Boyd, Mark Safranski, military history, security, Strategy, U.S. Air Force, war

Sam Tanenhaus got us thinking about this issue about a year ago with his claim in the New York Times that, after the death of Arthur Schlesinger, there was not a single "great public historian" left in America. Probably the most direct response to Tanenhaus came from Barbara Weinstein, the president of the AHA, in an essay titled "The Case of the Incredible Shrinking Historians?"

I tried to read the presidential responses from White and Weinstein with an open mind. I think they both make some really great points about how historical scholarship has become a lot more sophisticated over the last several decades. But I found myself wondering if I could trust their claims about history's relationship with the public. I kind of doubt they could have been elected presidents of major historical associations if they had spent most of their career trying to write for the public rather than for other historians.

So I did some more checking. I used WorldCat to determine what proportion of history books published annually by university presses are purchased by at least a thousand libraries. I then combined that data with some stats on bachelors degrees in history that I found in an article by Robert B. Townsend and in the Digest of Education Statistics.

As I combined these two data sets into a chart, I multiplied the proportions for academic history books by three so that it would vertically line up better with the line for degrees. I then shifted the data for history bachelors degrees back by four years, so that it would more accurately represent when the students who received bachelors degrees in history first decided to major in history. The results appear in the below chart.


I was somewhat surprised by the degree of correlation between the lines for history books and history degrees. Apparently there is a relationship between these two things. When academic history books sell well, public interest in history increases, and more students decide to major in history. When the sales of academic history books slump, the public and students become interested in other things. It looks to me like this is evidence that the golden age in history lasted from the early 1950s through the early 1970s.

There could have been another factor at work. Was there something about the activism and movements of the Sixties that made people at the time feel like they were witnessing the unfolding of history? And is that why the public became relatively interested in academic history books at the time?

Then again, the labor market could be the explanation. Maybe a bunch of students got interested in history during the 1960s, a considerable number of them decided to pursue doctorates, and the result was a large surplus of history PhDs on the job market during the 1970s. Maybe they saw the writing on the wall and decided that, in order to be competitive on the job market, they had to write dissertations that were more likely to impress historians and less likely to become books that the public would want to buy. Could this be why the golden age of history ended in the early 1970s?

What do the rest of you think? What did you find useful in the essays by White and Weinstein? Do you share their confidence about the state of history? Do you think history passed through a golden age? Do we need to recapture the interest of the public and of our students? How concerned are you about the apparent nosedive in the sales of academic history books over the last few years?

Labels: books, degrees, PhDinHistory, public, sales, students