Date: 2008-11-02 11:52:02 Created: null
I guess I'm some kind of history geek.
Around here the big book sale of the year started on Tuesday, and half an hour before closing time my brother and I joined the fray to make use of a Christmas gift cheque. I ended up getting Kevin Mitnick's The Art of Deception and Antony Beevor's Stalingrad. While I started reading The Art of Deception first, Stalingrad is definitely the one I'm more interested in and the one I've read most of. I first looked at it at a friend's place way back in 2002, and despite having friends around and all that I almost started reading it through right then and there. I'm not sure what it is with me and history, but something it is. I did the same thing with school books on history too. Fascinating reading it is, getting more insight and seeing all those almosts,
near misses,
wins by a hair
and feel all the inevitable
"But what if ... ?"s
going through your head.
And trying to imagine just what went through people's heads. What were they thinking? Usually I feel I can at least approach the mindsets, get close enough to at least make someone's actions seem plausible in one way or the other. Hitler obsessing over maps, ignoring the troubles of reality, soldiers deserting, soldiers going straight into hell. We humans can do it all, no matter if we want to or even want to think about having to be in those situations.
One of the ladies at work said today:
"It's nice to live in a duckpond."
How true it is.