On Reserve

Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War is on course reserve: chapter eight, "The Death Instinct: Why Men Fight" is very well worth reading. The title comes from this:

This book is not about heroes. English Poetry is not yet fit to speak of them. Nor is it about deeds, or lands, nor anything about glory, honour, might,majesty, dominion, or power, except war. Above all I am not concerned with Poetry. My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity. Yet these elegies are to this generation in no sense consolatory. They maybe to the next. All a poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.

~Wilfred Owen, from a preface to a planned book of his poetry.