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Among the Dead Cities: Is the Targeting of Civilians in War Ever Justified? by A.C. Grayling
ronanmcd's review against another edition
3.0
Kind of a weird book, both as a text and an object.
As an object; the copy I got from the public library had no publishing details. No colophon page telling me the year of publication, edition number, publisher address, isbn, copyright notice... Added to that were a good few spelling errors, editing errors (one present tense had an accompanying vestigial past participle). Most strangely of all, the wrong year was given for the Dresden bombing, several times, corrected in biro by a previous reader! As the central piece of evidence for the argument, this was very strange.
And then there's the text. It opens in better terms, and is very interesting. Then it slowly narrows its scope, making many arguments in repetition. It sets the scene for the final judgment chapter very early on, then spends a long time preempting potential counter arguments and nullifying them. Although I agree with the author, these preemptive arguments seem weakly made.
Like I said, a strange book, despite being a necessary topic for discussion.
As an object; the copy I got from the public library had no publishing details. No colophon page telling me the year of publication, edition number, publisher address, isbn, copyright notice... Added to that were a good few spelling errors, editing errors (one present tense had an accompanying vestigial past participle). Most strangely of all, the wrong year was given for the Dresden bombing, several times, corrected in biro by a previous reader! As the central piece of evidence for the argument, this was very strange.
And then there's the text. It opens in better terms, and is very interesting. Then it slowly narrows its scope, making many arguments in repetition. It sets the scene for the final judgment chapter very early on, then spends a long time preempting potential counter arguments and nullifying them. Although I agree with the author, these preemptive arguments seem weakly made.
Like I said, a strange book, despite being a necessary topic for discussion.
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