Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker has penned an exceptionally eloquent review essay of the latest World War One history that has emerged in the last several years. And although it is simple, doesn't his formulation of how historians and politcians view the two great wars of the 20th century weigh heavily on how people look at wars (and the threat of them) today?

The First World War teaches that territorial compromise is better than full-scale war, that an “honor-bound” allegiance of the great powers to small nations is a recipe for mass killing, and that it is crazy to let the blind mechanism of armies and alliances trump common sense. The Second teaches that searching for an accommodation with tyranny by selling out small nations only encourages the tyrant, that refusing to fight now leads to a worse fight later on, and that only the steadfast rejection of compromise can prevent the natural tendency to rush to a bad peace with worse men. The First teaches us never to rush into a fight, the Second never to back down from a bully ... Every time a Western politician with any historical sense faces a crisis, he has to decide whether he should back down and search for whatever compromise he can find, for fear of repeating 1914, or step up and slug somebody, for fear of repeating 1939. John Kennedy, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, had Barbara Tuchman’s “The Guns of August” as a warning at his bedside, but he also had his generals around him muttering about Munich.

And how about this for fascinating: archaeologists have discovered a cave once used by John the Baptist to baptize followers.