I was reading Paul Valéry the French thinker and critic, and who said the historian and the prophet are in the same boat – there is so much information needed to explain why things happened and why things will happen – that no one can imbibe it all. Modern life is not made so much by inventions but by millions of people using inventions. He was writing after the First World War and talking about the intellectual crisis that Europe as left with. A crisis that was modern and yet familiar. I am left wondering if a look at every book published in the decade before a major war might shine a light on the thinking that led to that war?
I think that might be fascinating research.
Praeterea, puto arma nuclearia Persiae delenda esse