LitMinds Blog and Interviews

Tonight, we are pleased to be hosting Sir Alistair Horne at the Hillside Club in North Berkeley.  It's a rare public appearance by the British historian whose book "A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962" was published over 30 years ago. 

This particular title was out of print when Henry Kissinger recommended it to all those in the Bush administration managing (or bungling... as the case may be) the war in Iraq. Horne's book has been characterized as a timely analysis of western power's inability to win hearts and minds of a Muslim people.  He describes how that challenge becomes nearly impossible when that western power resorts to morally reprehensible measures such as torture during interrogations.

The conversation with LitMinds own Lewis Klaustner (formerly of North Berkeley's independent bookstore Black Oak Books) will be taped for air by C-Span.  We expect it will be an enlightening evening of conversation with several professors and graduates students of history and political science at the reception and in the audience during the Q&A.

You can find more information about Alistair Horne's book, recently reprinted by The New York Review of Books on the publisher's website including this:

"The Algerian War lasted from 1954 to 1962. It caused the fall of six French governments...

The conflict made headlines around the world, and at the time it seemed like a French affair. From the perspective of half a century, however, this brutal and intractable conflict looks less like the last colonial war than the first postmodern one—a full-dress rehearsal for the sort of amorphous struggle that convulsed the Balkans in the 1990s and that now ravages the Middle East, from Beirut to Baghdad, struggles in which religion, nationalism, imperialism, and terrorism assume previously unimagined degrees of intensity."

The U.S. government has recently been criticized for its mismanagement of the war and its occupation of Iraq. Were the lessons that history had to offer ignored by those in charge?  Has the war for hearts and minds of the Iraqi people been irrevocably lost?  Is an expeditious retreat required?  We hope these questions and more will provide for an enlightening discussion.

For those of you who won't be able to attend in person, we'll keep you posted on details of the television broadcast. 

We are talking about this event on LitMinds.org's Literary Events board here.