Book Synopsis
Some of these essays are an attempt to make some sense of the most fashionable trends, fads and fancies of American historians and soothsayers in the early 21st century.
Seers of the future are an especially special breed of thinkers, and they already know it. What makes them annoying, however, is their irritating propensity for mistaking wit for brilliance. Case in point is the famous Albert Einstein quote:
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
What those who depend on this quotation as a cudgel for disarmament forget that even Einstein missed the ironic point: After humankind blows itself into the Stone Age, they will still be fighting.
Finally, there’s the constant refrain: War is not the answer. But that, of course, depends on what the question is.