All I seem to be able to read about recently is war. Some of that reading is predictable—I read the New York Times and the local paper every day—but lately it has seemed to me that in each book I pick up, no matter what the subject or purpose, passages about war leap out at me. Until I realized this, I made no conscious attempt to select books about war, but over this past spring and into the summer, I have been choosing to read about war.