Agreed. And yet, you walk away better understanding how those nightmares can become reality. By chance, I picked up Tuchman's "A Distant Mirror" from a sidewalk seller, and was struck by her ability to address so many parts of a whole. After finding that she won the Pulitzer for "The Guns of August", I had to read it.

I've heard that JFK was a big fan of "The Guns of August", and made it required reading in his cabinet.

As an aside, Tuchman is now recognized for the following reflection, which is often paraphrased as Tuchman's Law: "Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening, on a lucky day, without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena."

Oh, BTW: On the topic of encryption, I can't believe the Russians were sending unencrypted orders in WWI over wireless!