There are times when another person's cluelessness can simply rob you of speech. This is one of those times.

Women can't write military history? Women don't READ military history?

Will someone please tell the military academies, Texas A&M, VMI, Norwich and all the other fine institutions that currently educate the future leaders of our military branches that they're wasting their time eddicatin' the gurls in military history. Obviously, females lack the ability to comprehend such nonsense.

Furthermore, will someone please tell the Russians, the Isrealis, heck, most of the goddamn civilized world, that they are obviously suffering from mass delusions with their beliefs that some of their most fearsome warriors were and are women?

And obviously, despite her shoe fetish, Condi Rice is NOT a woman. How could she write military strategy without an ever-lovin' Y chromosone?

I'm apalled.

...the new president of Harvard, and a brilliant (female!) historian of the Civil War. For God's sake. What poppycock.

Upon reading the Crimson article, I see he was telling it to Drew Faust. Sigh...

as compared to softer, infinitely more feminine topics like culture, art and love.

You might be attempting to come off as light-hearted with this line, but what came out was pure snipe.

I guess her telling of history is not quite "military" enough, without all of the requisite blood and gore?

Still, "March of Folly" is soooooo timely.

This is 2007, yes? I was afraid I missed the 20th century when I read this article.

My two best history professors in college were women, and that was 30 years ago. JFK made "The Guns of August" required reading for everyone at the DoD.

Can't the New York Times stop embarrassing itself? Every couple of months for the past five years there is a fresh faux pas for the Grey Lady.

Jessep: You want answers?

Kaffee: I think I'm entitled to them.

Jessep: You want answers?

Kaffee: I want the truth!

Jessep: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives...You don't want the truth. Because deep down, in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.

We use words like honor, code, loyalty...we use these words as the backbone to a life spent defending something. You use 'em as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it! I'd rather you just said thank you and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!

a) The Guns of August is not military history. It's about the events leading up to World War I, not the war itself. At least with respect to this book, Barbara Tuchman is not really a military historian. Nice try.

b) Condi Rice is a diplomat. She is not in the military.

c) The reason there are very few female military historians is that there are very few women in the military.

Did you actually read The Guns of August? Because it is exactly about the first month of the war. It covers Germany's implementation of the Schleiffen Plan, the French counterattack, Germany's move through Belgium, the flight of the Goeben in the Mediterranean, and the Battle of Tannenburg on the Eastern Front. It chronicles the early war of movement, the period before the lines firmed up into trench warfare on the Western Front. World War I started on August 4th, so even someone who obviously had not read the book (like you) would be able to realize that it is most likely about the war, and not just the causes. This would also be someone who knows something about World War I (not you). Tuchman also wrote books about General Stillwell in China, and the American Revolutionary War (yes, tyler, about the actual wars.)

Are you suggesting that you have to have fought in a war to write war history? Because there are a lot of war historians who have not fought in a war.

Try spending less time transcribing movies and more time reading.

I just started reading "Hilltop on the Marne" by Mildred Aldrich, which contains a series of letters she'd exchanged with Gertrude Stein. Aldrich had just retired to a farmhouse in the French countrside in June, 1914, when she started her correspondence with Stein. Guess what happened next? However, according to the New York Times Book Review, Mildred Aldrich should have laid down her pen in 1914 because everyone knows women can't write military history. I guess being at the scene of some of the opening battles of WWI, talking to every French and British officer who came through the area, and having the analytical brain and writing chops to lucidly make sense of it to her American pen-pal doesn't count.

Same with Barbara Tuchman. Well, Tyler Durden informed us that she's not a real military historian because she's a woman. She didn't know she wasn't supposed to be a military historian, poor thing. And she passed away before Tyler could enlighten her. So we must forgive her for writing about 14th century fortresses, the effect of a certain infamous telegram on the United States entry into WWI, and the respective follies of Renaissance popes, King George III, and Robert McNamara, not to mention being one of the few writers who made sense of the opening days of WWI. (Too bad she's not still with us -- she'd have had plenty of material for the long-awaited sixth chapter to her book, "Folly".) Nope, none of these things counts as military history, even though they discuss significant aspects of historical wars. I guess she didn't include enough details about troop deployments, technical aspects of weaponry and armor, and other minutia for good 'ol Tyler's taste.

So would someone kindly tell Joanna Bourke that she's not supposed to write about the effect that killing has on soldiers? She's a woman and women simply can't write about things like that. And Iris Chang, who wrote about the Japanese sack of Nanking. She was writing about atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers during their takeover of the city, but apparently that's not really military history according to our resident experts.

And Elizabeth Normal writing about the war nurses who were captured by the Japanese during their invasion of the Phillippines? Puh-LEASE! It's about nurses! That's hardly a topic for a real military historian to take on! Why on earth didn't she include a detailed breakdown of the American and Japanese positions on the Bataan Peninsula, or at least a statistical discussion of casualty rates and the frequency of head wounds vs. other types of injuries? Now, that's the good stuff.

All levity aside, it's true that there are fewer female than male military historians, mainly because men tend to be more interested in war than women. (For like reasons, there are few male fashion historians.) But that doesn't mean they don't exist.