ARSENAL

The numbers are still staggering, every time we look at them. From 1940 to 1945, the U.S. produced 141 aircraft carriers; eight battleships; 807 cruisers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts; and 208 submarines. It produced 324,000 aircraft, 88,410 tanks, 2.4 million trucks, 2.6 million machine guns, and 41 billion rounds of ammunition.

NRPLUS
MagazineSeptember 2025 Issue

How We Built the Arsenal of Democracy
By Arthur Herman
July 24, 2025 

And how we can do it again

The bad news is, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, our nation’s defense-industrial base is in serious crisis.

According to a recent report from the Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States (an independent, bipartisan group established by Congress in 2022), the factories, facilities, plants, and shipyards of our current defense-industrial base are “grossly inadequate” for confronting the dual threats of Russia and China. The Defense Department agrees. Its first-ever Defense Industrial Strategy document highlighted “serious shortfalls” in the existing base, including manufacturing, supply chains, workforce, and production, and it concluded that “this call to action may seem a great cost, but the consequences of inaction or failure are far greater.”

That was under the Biden administration. The “big, beautiful bill” passed by Congress and signed by Trump at least tries to undo the damage of the past 30 years. It sets aside $29 billion for shipbuilding and other spending tied to our naval and maritime industrial base; our officials are belatedly realizing the two are intertwined and inseparable. It spends another $25 billion for munitions spread across various programs — the war in Ukraine demonstrated that our industrial base is not making enough conventional artillery shells. Another $5 billion will be invested in the critical minerals needed for building today’s weaponry, and $16 billion will go toward innovative technologies such as drones, AI, and low-cost weapons.

All this, however, will take time, which is in shorter supply even than money. All in all, it’s a grim situation we’re only beginning to address.

We’ve been here before, on the eve of World War II. The result five years later was the creation of the greatest military-industrial complex in history. But the answer then, as now, didn’t spring from Congress or the Oval Office. It came from corporate boardrooms around the country.

In 1940, the United States had the 18th-largest army in the world, right behind tiny Holland. While equipped with modern carriers and battleships, the Navy faced too many global commitments with meager resources; it was not prepared to face a potential invader like Hitler’s Germany. General George Marshall, Army chief of staff, warned Roosevelt that if Hitler landed five divisions on American soil, there would be nothing he could do to stop them. Meanwhile, within a year and a half, the Navy’s vaunted battleships sat at the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

America found itself systematically unable to meet the demands of modern mechanized warfare on land, sea, or air. Neither the War nor Navy Departments had plans for how to revive a defense-industrial base that had been largely dismantled after World War I.

That critical summer of 1940, Roosevelt found a corporate leader willing to undertake the task: mass-production wizard and General Motors President William “Big Bill” Knudsen. Knudsen told FDR that, given 18 months’ head start, he and his colleagues could mobilize enough of American industry to trigger the single greatest outpouring of modern weaponry the world had ever seen, from planes, tanks, and machine guns to ships, submarines, and aircraft carriers.

Roosevelt decided to give Knudsen and his colleagues a free hand, based on three key principles.

The first was mobilizing America’s biggest and most productive companies to make what was needed, even if they had never made war matériel before. Knudsen turned to the automotive, steel, chemical, and electronics industries because they had the largest engineering departments — men (and sometimes women) who could figure out how to produce the decisive weapons the military needed in record numbers, from bazookas (GE) and torpedoes (Westinghouse) to entire B-24 bombers (Ford) — eventually even the plutonium for an atomic bomb (DuPont).

Second, Knudsen insisted that FDR clear away antibusiness tax rules and regulations, including suspending antitrust laws, so industry could focus on producing what the armed forces needed, not dodging government lawsuits. That included pushing aside the Navy and War Departments’ antiquated rules for procurement, which reflected leisurely peacetime conditions, not wartime emergency.

Third, Knudsen insisted on keeping the entire process voluntary, so corporate leaders would be free to decide on their own which war matériel they were best suited to contract for, and how to produce it. The point was to reduce Washington’s interference in the production process and make sure that federal dollars followed the trail of productivity and innovation, not the other way around.

The plan worked. By the time Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the scale of American war production was already approaching that of Nazi Germany. America was on the way to becoming what Roosevelt famously dubbed the “arsenal of democracy” (a phrase that was coined by Knudsen). By the end of 1942, America was producing more tanks, ships, planes, and guns than the entire Axis.

The numbers are still staggering, every time we look at them. From 1940 to 1945, the U.S. produced 141 aircraft carriers; eight battleships; 807 cruisers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts; and 208 submarines. It produced 324,000 aircraft, 88,410 tanks, 2.4 million trucks, 2.6 million machine guns, and 41 billion rounds of ammunition.

By 1944, American industry was producing eight aircraft carriers a month, 50 merchant ships a day, and a warplane every five minutes. Two-thirds of all the war matériel used by all the Allies in World War II came from America — as did the most powerful innovative weapon in history, the atomic bomb.

In one sense, the challenge this time of turning around our current defense-industrial base will be easier. In terms of talent, innovation, and basic physical facilities, we already have the best military-industrial complex on the planet. It’s true that we are no longer the manufacturing center of the world we once were. In 1945, the United States hosted one-half of the world’s industrial capacity. Today it’s less than 16 percent. Today it’s China that enjoys the edge, at just over 30 percent. The Chinese have unleashed their manufacturing base to build up their forces on land, sea, air, and space in ways that suggest they’ve learned — or at least think they’ve learned — the lessons of World War II better than we have.

One thing is clear. The rebuilding of our defense-industrial base can’t, and won’t, rest on the big defense contractors alone, the Boeings, the Lockheed Martins, and the Northrop Grummans. They bring a lot to the process: talent, experience, and unsurpassed skill in integrating many supply chains and subcontractors into complex workable wholes. But they are not the drivers of today’s high-tech economy the same way that Ford and GM and General Electric were the drivers of our industrial economy when they armed America for World War II. They have become too tethered to the bureaucratic workings of today’s Pentagon to be the main architects of tomorrow’s.

Fortunately, a new generation of patriotic business leaders — from Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to the CEOs of high-tech defense companies like Palantir and Anduril and General Atomics — are waiting for the opportunity to transform their companies into powerhouses of a new arsenal of democracy. The same is true of the leaders of the “Magnificent Seven” tech companies, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Google, and Jensen Huang of Nvidia. Give them the right kind of call, as Roosevelt did with Bill Knudsen and Henry Kaiser in 1940, and they will answer.

This raises a broader point about rebuilding our defense industries. If we are going to leap ahead of China in critical areas such as shipbuilding, space, and hypersonics, we’ll have to deploy an extremely innovative series of technologies and policies that allows us to reinvent our manufacturing base as a whole. A great place to start will be the defense-industrial base.

In fact, those who bemoan the shrunken state of our manufacturing economy and complain that we don’t have enough time or resources or workers to rebuild that base are looking at the problem from the wrong end. By reinventing the economic sector most vital to our national security — the defense-industrial sector — we can achieve ripple effects throughout the rest of the economy. But only if we unleash the energy and dynamism of the private sector to solve our most pressing issues in the public sector.

Overall, there are six steps we can take to reinvent a defense-industrial base for the 21st century.

First, the new administration has to sweep aside the regulations and obstacles that slow our productive defense sector. One of those obstacles is the Pentagon budget system itself, which is encrusted with rules and red tape more suited to the industrial age than the space age. Congress needs to adopt the reforms recommended by its commission on Pentagon budget reform. (Full disclosure: I helped to write that commission’s interim and final reports.)

Second, engage the best advanced technologies to accelerate production and innovation. Most big defense-manufacturing facilities are set up for very limited types of production, such as the F-35 or Virginia-class submarine. The future of defense production, however, lies in diversifying the manufacturing process itself, through the use of AI, robotics, and 3-D printing. The ultimate goal should be to produce multiple products at once: for example, advanced sensors with one line geared for defense and national security, the other for commercial purposes.

Third, make use of a host of smaller, leaner, more specialized defense companies that provide vital supply chain support and subcomponents for larger defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Anduril — all here in the United States. They will also be important laboratories for developing new approaches to manufacturing and the technologies that will support that effort — not only for our defense base but for a revived commercial base as well.

Fourth, incentivize a new generation of workers for defense and defense-related industries. A study by the think tank Third Way showed that in 2022 some 600,000 Americans were in registered apprenticeship programs. That’s barely 0.3 percent of the working-age population in the country. That number is five times higher in Canada, seven times higher in Germany, and twelve times higher in Switzerland.
Instead of focusing on apprenticeship programs for the big defense contractors, bring the programs to the smaller, more innovative players. In Germany, for example, so-called Mittelstand (small and medium-size businesses) actively engage their younger workers in fashioning the business itself: More than 80 percent offer incentives for workers to contribute new ideas. The American equivalent can be seedbeds for building a new industrial workforce that is engaged, creative, and productive.

Fifth, enlist the universities in developing defense-related technologies, including AI and quantum computing. University-based research and development were crucial to the military-industrial complex during the Cold War. One of its historic offshoots was Silicon Valley. Bringing university research to small- to middle-scale defense firms, not just the big contractors, can save not only our defense-industrial base but also our universities in the post-woke era.

Sixth, incentivize venture capitalists to fund our national security. Venture capitalists are expert at finding opportunities in commercial markets but not so good in understanding defense applications. If we rethink defense production as a step in successful commercial manufacturing, rather than the other way around, we could open the floodgates for the $1.3 trillion venture capital market to flow directly into the defense and defense-related realm. That would be a key advantage over China, as well, where new venture capital investment in 2025 will barely hit $70 billion.

In that regard, it’s time for the Pentagon to encourage defense producers to think about how their products can open a niche in commercial markets as well as meet military requirements. That won’t just draw in private capital investment. It’s how defense producers can make their products more innovative and cost-effective, in order to compete in the commercial marketplace.

The arsenal of democracy in World War II was built by companies large and small who had first made their mark as commercial companies. Defense specialists — firms with little or no commercial business — accounted for only 6 percent of the Defense Department’s major programs at the end of the Cold War. In 2024, it was 61 percent. It’s time to turn those numbers back around. By doing so, by unleashing the energy, creativity, and drive of the private sector to rebuild our defense-industrial base, we can trigger a tech-industrial revival of the American economy — one that makes us more secure and more prosperous far into the future.

FATHERHOOD

If we follow the evidence where it leads, we must conclude that the biggest intervention in education is not another literacy coach or SEL program. It’s dad.

AEI

Family Structure Matters to Student Achievement. What Should We Do with That?

By Robert Pondiscio
The Next 30 Years
July 10, 2025

A recent report from the University of Virginia—Good Fathers, Flourishing Kids—confirms what many of us know instinctively but rarely see, or avoid altogether, in education debates: The presence and engagement of a child’s father has a powerful effect on their academic and emotional well-being. It’s the kind of data that should stop us in our tracks—and redirect our attention away from educational fads and toward the foundational structures that shape student success long before a child ever sets foot in a classroom.

The research, led by my AEI colleague Brad Wilcox and co-authored by a diverse team that includes another AEI colleague, Ian Rowe, finds that children in Virginia with actively involved fathers are more likely to earn good grades, less likely to have behavior problems in school, and dramatically less likely to suffer from depression. Specifically, children with disengaged fathers are 68% less likely to get mostly good grades and nearly four times more likely to be diagnosed with depression. These are not trivial effects. They are seismic.

Most striking is the report’s finding that there is no meaningful difference in school grades among demographically diverse children raised in intact families. Black and white students living with their fathers get mostly A’s at roughly equal rates—more than 85%—and are equally unlikely to experience school behavior problems. The achievement gap, in other words, appears to be less about race and more about the structure and stability of the family.

This may be a surprising finding to some, but not to William Jeynes, a professor of education at California State University, Long Beach, whose meta-analyses have previously demonstrated the outsized academic impact of family structure and religious faith. (The new UVA report does not study the role of church-going.) As I wrote in How the Other Half Learns, Jeynes’ work highlights how two-parent households and religious engagement produce measurable benefits in educational achievement. “When two parents are present, this maximizes the frequency and quality of parental involvement. There are many dedicated single parents,” Jeynes has noted. “However, the reality is that when one parent must take on the roles and functions of two, it is simply more difficult than when two parents are present.” Jeynes’ most stunning finding, and his most consistent, is that if a Black or Hispanic student is raised in a religious home with two biological parents the achievement gap totally disappears—even when adjusting for socioeconomic status.

My colleague Ian Rowe has been a tireless advocate for recognizing and responding to these patterns. He has long argued that NAEP—the Nation’s Report Card—should disaggregate student achievement data by family composition, not just by race and income. That simple step would yield a more honest accounting of the challenges schools are facing—and help avoid both unfair blame and unearned credit.

Yet this conversation remains a third rail in education. Many teachers and administrators are understandably wary of saying too much about family structure for fear of stigmatizing children from single-parent households—particularly in settings where single-parent households are dominant. Rowe has also faced resistance to his efforts to valorize the “Success Sequence,” the empirical finding that graduating high school, getting a full-time job, and marrying before having children dramatically increases one’s odds of avoiding poverty. But being cautious is not the same as being silent, and it’s not compassionate to pretend these dynamics don’t matter when the data so clearly shows that they do.

None of this absolves educators of their duty to reach and teach every child. But it does suggest we should be clear-eyed in how we interpret data and set expectations. Teachers, particularly those in low-income communities, often shoulder the full weight of student outcomes while lacking the ability to influence some of the most powerful predictors of those outcomes. That’s frustrating—and understandably so.

Citing compelling evidence on fatherhood and family formation is not a call for resignation or excuse-making. It’s a call for awareness and intelligent action. While schools can’t influence or re-engineer family structure, teachers can respond in ways that affirm the role of fathers and strengthen the school-home connection. They can make fathers feel welcome and expected in school life—not merely tolerated. They can design family engagement activities that include dads as co-participants, not afterthoughts. They can build classroom cultures that offer structure and mentoring, especially to students who may lack it at home. And maybe—just maybe—the field can overcome its reluctance to share with students what research so clearly shows will benefit them and the children they will have in the future. Rowe takes pains to note his initiative to teach the Success Sequence is intended to help students make decisions about the families they will form, not the ones they’re from. “It’s not about telling them what to do,” he says, “it’s about giving them the data and letting them decide for themselves.”

This leads to a final point, and for some an uncomfortable one: If we truly care about student outcomes, perhaps we should be willing to support the institutions that reliably foster them. And that includes religious schools.

Religious schools—particularly those rooted in faith traditions that emphasize marriage, family life, and moral formation—often create environments where the presence of fathers and the reinforcement of shared values are not incidental but central. A recent analysis by Patrick J. Wolf of the University of Arkansas, published in the Journal of Catholic Education, found that adults who attended religious schools are significantly more likely to marry, stay married, and avoid non‑marital births compared to public‑school peers. The effects are most pronounced among individuals from lower‑income backgrounds.

In states with Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and other school choice mechanisms, we have an opportunity—perhaps an obligation—to expand access to these institutions. That’s not merely a question of parental rights or religious liberty. It’s a matter of public interest. If these schools produce better education and social outcomes by encouraging family formation and reinforcing the value of fatherhood, the public benefits—even if instruction is delivered in a faith-based context. Said simply: The goal of educational policy and practice is not to save the system. It’s to help students flourish.

So yes, let’s fund fatherhood initiatives. Let’s run PSAs about the importance of dads. But let’s also get serious about expanding access to the kinds of schools—whether secular or religious in nature—that support the kind of family culture where children are most likely to thrive. Because if we follow the evidence where it leads, we must conclude that the biggest intervention in education is not another literacy coach or SEL program. It’s dad.

BOOK BANNING

 What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one.

Foreword to Amusing Ourselves to Death

Neil Postman, 1985

We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares. 

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another—slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. 

What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. 

This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.

Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Penguin Group. Kindle Edition. 

GURKHAS

 My other strongest memory of Pyawbwe is of getting to know the Gurkhas, whose pits were close to ours, and to whom I made regular visits to trade rations. As Grandarse said, they would have sold their souls for tinned herrings in tomato sauce, or for sardines, and I only had to stroll across to their positions with a couple of the oval tins in my hand to be greeted with huge smiles and squeals of “Hey, Jock—chappatti, dood, cheeny! Shabash!” And out would come the sugar and condensed milk, or the big flat chappattis which they baked on their company fire, by way of exchange, the deal being cemented by the offer of cigarettes on my part and the acceptance of a huge mug of their sickly sweet tea, to be drunk sitting in the middle of a grinning chattering group of those wonderful little men. There is nothing like tea in the afternoon, whether it is in snug comfort at home on a winter’s day, or on the terrace of Reid’s or in the cool white peace of the old Raffles in Singapore, or the Hong Kong Peninsula (even if they did put onion with the salmon sandwiches), or in an English tea-shop—but having tea with the Gurkhas is something special, for they radiate a cheer and good fellowship that has to be experienced, and once you have, you understand why British soldiers have always held them in an affection that is pretty close to love.

    Exuberance is a poor word for their social behaviour. Except for a few exchanges in broken Urdu we could not converse, but having heard me addressed as Jock they knew I was Scotch, which sent them into peals of delight, with half a dozen of them scurrying away to bring their company piper, who regaled me with “Scotland the Brave” and “Cock o’ the North” while sundry of his comrades marched up and down, scowling horribly in what I took to be Caledonian imitation. One of them got so carried away that he suddenly leaped in front of me, grimacing and yelling: “Hey, Jock—Japanni mat karo!” (which very loosely translates as “Death to the Japanese!”) and went into a violent pantomime in which he clove the air with his kukri, to enthusiastic applause, and then enacted the dying enemy, writhing on the ground screaming “Banzai bus! Banzai bus!” and feigning death while his friends sat round and hurled abuse at his corpse. After which they all collapsed in laughter, and we had some more tea.

    A Gurkha subaltern whom I met later told me that commanding a platoon of them was like leading a group of perfectly-disciplined ten-year-olds, and I believe him. Watching them play football, for example, was like watching very small children, for they had not the least idea of playing the game; they had no interest in teams or goals or anything of the sort. Their one idea was to chase the ball in a screaming, laughing mob, booting it as far as possible and running after it with their little skulls gleaming and pigtails bobbing, to boot it again. Unless chance directed the ball back to where they started, they were liable to vanish into the distance, yelling: “Futtbal! Futtbal!”—and the extraordinary thing was that they did it properly dressed, with their puttees on and shirts buttoned at the wrists.

    Their only other recreation that I saw was the catapult—the Y-and-elastic toy which the Americans call a slingshot. Many Gurkhas carried them in their hip-pockets, and if you were suddenly stung a tergo and heard a smothered giggle from behind a tree, it was worth stopping and shouting: “Idderao, Johnny! Ham dekko, you little bugger!” just for the pleasure of seeing the small face come peeping cautiously out, followed by the marksman himself, wearing a sheepish grin and holding up his catapult by way of explanation, as if you didn’t know. So far as I could see they confined themselves to British targets (there seemed to be no great love lost between them and the Indian regiments, especially the Sikhs), and we took it as a compliment. No one would have dreamed of taking offence; it would have been downright cruel, for the Gurkha was as eager to please as a playful grandchild. The thought of quarrelling with one of them never even occurred—for one thing, you’d be better picking a fight with a king cobra.

    That was a thing that was often hard to remember: that this delightful little man, with his ungainly walk and protruding backside and impish grin, who barely came up to your shoulder and was one of nature’s born comedians, was also probably the most fatal fighting man on earth.


George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered Safe Out Here
London: Harper Collins, 1995, 130-132

HISTORY PAPERS

 [We asked ChatGPT for an op-ed on the importance of history research papers for HS students. This is the result.]

 Why High School Students Should Write Serious History Research Papers

In recent years, American high schools have placed increasing emphasis on test preparation, digital fluency, and curriculum coverage. While these goals have value, they often come at the expense of something deeper: sustained, independent thinking. Among the casualties of this shift is the long-form history research paper—a rigorous academic challenge that may be one of the best tools we have for cultivating intellectual maturity in young people.

Asking a high school student to write a 5,000- to 8,000-word research paper on a historical topic is not a common practice. In many schools, assignments are becoming shorter, writing more fragmented, and deadlines compressed into busy academic calendars. The history research paper, which once served as a kind of academic rite of passage, is now often seen as impractical, even obsolete.

But this is a mistake.

A serious history paper demands far more than writing ability. It begins with a question—often one the student must formulate on their own. It requires reading books and scholarly articles, sorting through primary sources, and learning to evaluate competing interpretations. It calls for planning, revising, and constructing an argument based not on personal opinion, but on evidence. It is, in short, a complete intellectual process. And it is precisely that process that students are missing when they are never asked to attempt such work.

In writing a long-form history paper, students gain more than knowledge about the past—they gain the habits of thinking that prepare them for the future. They learn to slow down and think clearly. They confront complexity and develop the patience to work through it. They learn that opinions are easy to state but hard to justify, and that writing is not typing—it is thinking, refined and reshaped over time.
These are not only academic skills. They are civic ones.

In a democracy, informed citizens must be able to analyze information, understand multiple perspectives, and weigh historical context. Quick judgments and emotional reactions are no substitute for the kind of deep, disciplined reasoning that historical thinking encourages. When students research and write about the past, they begin to see how today's events are shaped by choices made long ago—and how their own choices will shape the future.

Moreover, this kind of writing helps students understand the relationship between freedom and responsibility. They are free to choose a topic, but they must take responsibility for understanding it well. They are free to argue a position, but they must back it with evidence. In this way, the history research paper models what it means to be a thoughtful participant in public life: to speak with purpose, to listen with care, and to argue with reason rather than outrage.

Some may object that this is asking too much of teenagers. But experience proves otherwise. When students are given time, encouragement, and support, many rise to the challenge with surprising maturity. They don’t just complete a school assignment—they produce something they are proud of. And that pride, earned through real intellectual effort, cannot be replicated by grades alone.

Not every student will become a historian. But every student can benefit from learning to think historically. That means knowing how to examine sources, question narratives, and understand how context shapes events and decisions. These are not just skills for the classroom. They are tools for life.

If we want to educate not just competent students but capable citizens, we must offer more than short-answer tests and timed essays. We must give young people the opportunity to read difficult texts, write at length, and struggle through the process of clarifying their own thinking. A well-crafted history paper does all of this—and more.

Bringing back the research paper may not be easy. It requires time, commitment, and a belief that students are capable of more than the bare minimum. But the rewards—for students, teachers, and society—are well worth the effort.

We underestimate teenagers when we assume they cannot think deeply. Let’s challenge them to prove us wrong.

HISTORY BOOKS

 
[We asked Chat GPT to write an op-ed on the importance of complete history books for high school students—this is the result…4-28-2025]———

The Enduring Importance of Reading Complete History Books in High School

In an educational culture increasingly dominated by abbreviated materials and digital summaries, the case for reading complete history books has become urgent. High school students, in particular, stand to gain immeasurably from the discipline, knowledge, and perspective that only full-length historical works can provide. While short excerpts may offer convenience, they deprive students of the depth of engagement that true historical inquiry demands.

The reading of entire history books cultivates a set of intellectual habits that no substitute can replicate. Chief among these is the capacity for sustained attention. In following an argument across chapters—rather than a few isolated pages—students must confront complexity, weigh evidence, and trace the evolution of ideas over time. They are invited into a serious dialogue with the author and the material, developing habits of critical inquiry that are essential not only for academic success but for informed citizenship.

Moreover, full-length works provide a coherent narrative structure that allows students to perceive causality, contingency, and consequence—elements central to understanding history as a discipline. In contrast, piecemeal readings encourage fragmented thinking, obscuring the interconnectedness that historical study seeks to illuminate. Students who engage deeply with complete works are better prepared to write persuasively, to analyze rigorously, and to recognize the moral and political complexities inherent in the human past.

The character formation that results from such engagement is equally significant. Reading complete history books requires patience, discipline, and humility—virtues rarely fostered by rapid consumption of information. Students must wrestle with ambiguity and develop empathy for people whose lives and choices differed profoundly from their own. In doing so, they cultivate a maturity of perspective badly needed in an era of polarization and superficial judgments.

There is, too, the question of ambition. When we ask students to read only excerpts, we subtly communicate that they are incapable of more demanding work. When we assign whole books, we affirm our confidence in their intellectual capacities. We give them the opportunity to see themselves as serious scholars, capable of engaging with complex arguments and contributing thoughtfully to ongoing conversations about the past.

The benefits extend beyond history itself. Students trained to read whole books bring those habits to every area of study—and ultimately to the public sphere. They learn that understanding requires effort, that easy answers are usually insufficient, and that responsible judgment depends on careful, informed inquiry.
Practical concerns should not deter us. It is true that reading complete works demands more time and careful curricular planning. Yet the long-term payoff—in student writing, thinking, and character—is undeniable. Teachers must be equipped to support students through these readings, offering guidance without diluting the challenge. Schools must defend the value of deep learning against the pressures of expediency.

At a time when attention spans are shrinking and historical ignorance is widespread, reading complete history books is not a luxury. It is a necessity. It reminds students that the past is not a series of disconnected facts but a living, contested, and richly textured reality. It prepares them not merely for examinations, but for the demands of thoughtful adulthood.

In short, reading full-length history works is an education in seriousness itself. It is an apprenticeship to careful thought, honest inquiry, and the love of truth. As we consider how best to educate the next generation, let us remember that easy shortcuts produce only shallow understanding. If we wish to form citizens capable of sustaining a free and thoughtful society, we must begin by asking them to read—really read— the full, complicated stories of those who came before them.
 

Russia in the 19th

In the first half of the nineteenth century, this isolation and Russia’s own imperial ambitions helped turn the country, in the West’s estimation, into a mortal threat. After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, it didn’t take Britain long to substitute Russia in his place as the tyrant du jour. From Whitehall to the popular press and streets of London came the image of the Russian bear threatening to claw its way through Europe—but with none of the French emperor’s enlightened mindset. Instead, the only gift Russia could offer its victims was Eastern despotism and enslavement. 

By mid-century its imperial drive seemed to confirm this as it marched through the Caucasus and Central Asia en route to ruling nearly a sixth of the world. Certainly the oppressed peoples of Eastern Europe, such as the Poles, could attest to Russia’s implacable predatory nature. It did not take much for Britain—while still fearing French invasion—to see that expansion as a direct threat to its own empire, in particular its terrestrial links to India. 

Ironically it was Karl Marx, certainly no friend of capitalist Britain, who gave voice to the fears of many in the West. One could never trust Russia, he warned at the time, since “its methods, its tactics, its maneuvers may change, but the polar star of its policy—world domination—is a fixed star.” Russia did little to assuage such fears. With pride it stood solidly and stubbornly as the “gendarme of Europe,” its army always ready to pounce on any expression of freedom or liberty no matter where such sentiments might be found—even outside its borders. 

The latest to discover this had been the Hungarian nationalists in their struggle for independence from their Austrian overlords. When revolution flared across Europe in 1848, including in Budapest, Russia had sent an army across its border to quash them since it could not countenance any threats to Europe’s political order.
 

Gregory Carleton, Crimean Quagmire: Tolstoy, Russell and the Birth of Modern Warfare (6-7). (Function). Kindle Edition.