A recent thrift store find has enraptured me and given me insight into the history of America, which feels especially poignant and overlooked as we approach the 250th anniversary of this bizarre, wonderful, terrible country. For a quarter, I picked up a copy of “Atlas of American Wars,” printed in the Year of Our Lord 1986, just a few years before I was born — which means its contents are missing a lot of the American misadventures and atrocities that have spanned my lifetime. Nevertheless, it’s an enlightening read in light of how dramatically war has changed in the last two-and-a-half centuries.
The book serves as an excellent way of looking back at the bloodshed inside and outside the U.S. because it is, as an atlas should be, almost entirely filled with battlefield maps that cover virtually every campaign, large and small, many of which have been largely forgotten. Collectively, they stand as a blunt reminder that war, the dumbest and most vicious human invention, occurs in time and space. I mean, of course it does. But when you see every major turning point in American history spread out like a bloody centerfold, it reduces everything to ant trails, underscoring how pathetic and sad warfare really is, even when we think it’s justified.
