In reviewing two new war histories, Joanna Bourke contemplates our moral dilemma:
[T]here is a danger that by focusing on the individual experience the broader context is lost. Readers end up knowing what certain events meant to specific people, rather than how these events acquired their meaning. The books aspire to create an affective connection between sufferers in the past and readers today. Affective history is a welcome relief from the language of disinterestedness that used to characterize much military history but, served alone, it fails to provide new perspectives and understandings, beyond “the horror, the horror”.
The Dish 