Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, by Paul Fussell (Oxford, 330 pp., $19.95).
A wise reviewer will go to almost any length to avoid such words as I am going to use, lest his reader suspect that he is smoking something strange or else is secretly receiving an emolument from the book’s publisher. But the truth is the truth, and here goes. Paul Fussell’s new book is a masterpiece. It brings us important new cultural knowledge, a rare achievement. Its overall thesis is powerful and persuasive. Its local insights are numerous and very rich. You turn the final page with a sense of melancholy, for now you have read it and, alas, there is no more.
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