Ep 060 "The Military Historian's Craft: Past Tense Imperfect"

This CG episode got the complete audio upgrade and revision to achieve the cleanest sound ever for the podcast series effective 22 June 2025 using the new technology at Chris Williams' Podsworth.

I am an un-credentialed amateur historian who has done very little archive work and lack the substantial infrastructure credentialed historians have to practice their craft. I have debated esteemed historians and won on stage (Daniel Walker Howe looked at my CV and did not prepare) but that doesn't make me better than them.

I think my various detours in life mostly outside the formal academy gives me a unique insight into how history works and why I think I am more sober than university historians.

I describe some of the reasons I do it and the techniques I employ to get the single most accurate picture of what happened then to determine what's going on now.

I am the Smedley D. Butler Fellow for Military Affairs at the Libertarian Institute.

Recommended Reading:

Mortimer Adler How To Read a Book

Robert Strassler The Landmark Xenophon's Hellenika (Landmark Series)

Mike Snook How Can Man Die Better: The Secrets of Isandlwana Revealed

Mike Snook Like Wolves on the Fold: The Defence of Rorke’s Drift

David Stahel Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East

David Hackett Fischer Historians' Fallacies : Toward a Logic of Historical Thought

Keith Windschuttle The Killing of History

John Burrow A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century

Harry Elmer Barnes A History of Historical Writing

US Army Center of Military History

My Substack

Email at [email protected]