Some Desperate Glory

by Emily Tesh

Don’t think. Don’t fear. Find the next thing to do, and the next.

peace brought about with the threat of violence is only a war in waiting. True peace would surely require the elimination of warfare altogether. Utopia—the perfect society—demands what we might call an unenforced peace. But is it possible? Unenforced peace would require an end to all conflict. The question then arises: What causes conflict? Resources, says history, and ideas.

The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton, for a considered examination of the twentieth century’s most terrible political creation;

The Impossible State by Victor Cha, which discusses the history, the logic, and the peculiar international position of North Korea; Going Clear by Lawrence Wright, particularly interesting on the personalities that drove the creation and lasting power of the modern cult of Scientology; The Spartans by Paul Cartledge, for an overview of the ancient militarized ethnostate that has cast such a remarkably long mythic shadow over the two thousand–odd years since its total failure.