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Article: A Papier-Mache Fortress. (Books).('The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History')(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The National Interest
- Article date:
- December 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The National Interest, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), 921 pp., $40.
PHILIP BOBBITT's The Shield of Achilles is a bad book. It is error strewn, it suffers from grand delusions of theoretical adequacy; and it is unscholarly. This judgment, however, being evidently a minority one, imposes an obligation not only to render the work's aim, thesis and argument fairly before criticizing it, but also to account for the book's evident appeal to the public, as well as to several distinguished historians who have endorsed it.
The former task is not easy, given the book's great length and convoluted ...