Adam Hochschild
Adam Hochschild
Adam Hochschildis an American author, journalist, and lecturer. His best-known works include King Leopold's Ghost, To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918, Bury the Chains, The Mirror at Midnight, and The Unquiet Ghost...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
almost assume enduring foresee generals invariably lead nations painfully remarkably seem swift tendency war
As the First World War made painfully clear, when politicians and generals lead nations into war, they almost invariably assume swift victory, and have a remarkably enduring tendency not to foresee problems that, in hindsight, seem obvious.
humanity world global-warming
All of us living in today's world are facing an enormous crisis - arguably the greatest that humanity has ever faced - in the form of man-made global warming; one can't be neutral at such a moment. It's like claiming to be neutral if you're living in Germany in 1933.
war world victim
Things have gotten openly more extreme in the last few years. I was lecturing in Hungary, whose prime minister, Victor Orban, is an example of this trend. All over Budapest, statues have been replaced, museum exhibits have been redone, to turn ethnic Hungarians, not Jews, into the prime victims of the Germans during World War II. Five years ago, who would have thought this possible?
war civil-war american-writer
Even [Ernst] Hemingway, perhaps the most intentionally non-political of American writers, became passionately partisan during the Spanish Civil War.
war our-world way
The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.
sports football war
One of my favourite contemporary fiction writers is a Texan, Ben Fountain. His extraordinary novel, Billy Lynn's Long Half-Time Walk, all takes place within the half-time show at a Dallas Cowboys football game. No one has better summed up the American appetite for spectacle, the link between sports and politics, and the absolute madness of George W. Bush's Iraq War.
lying war loss
Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives.
buried human instinct patriotic tribal
I think that, in almost all human beings, there is buried a profound tribal instinct that makes us very susceptible to being aroused to patriotic fervour.
britain history squashed united
I think the tradition of well-written history hasn't been squashed out of the academic world as much in Britain as it has in the United States.
country haiti outsiders poorest range remains supposed western
For the better part of two centuries, outsiders have been offering explanations that range from racist to learned-sounding - the supposed inferiority of blacks, the heritage of slavery, overpopulation - for why Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
injustice wonderful contradiction
The late Nadine Gordimer in South Africa, for example, had a wonderful ability to get her country's injustices and contradictions down on paper. Ditto for her countryman the great playwright Athol Fugard.
country thinking politician
Speaking of Germany in 1933, I don't think you can remove yourself from politics when, in so many countries - the United States, Poland, Hungary, and many others - you've got politicians in power or vying for power who are taking tactics and elements of their appeal from the playbook of fascism.
proud significant refugee
Compared with how we've ducked it in the United States, Canada should be really proud of how you have welcomed a significant number of refugees - far more, in fact, than we Americans have, even though our population is vastly larger.
writing thinking trying
I think writers can respond by writing about the refugee crisis, by looking at problems faced by migrants, by trying hard to portray them as the human beings that they are.