Opposite What Peggy Noonan Projects, This Time Isn't Different

In his excellent The Book of Charlie, Washington Post columnist David Von Drehle listed some of the worst tragedies of the 20^th century. The 20^th was marked by “unprecedented violence and dislocation – the Great War giving way to the Russian Revolution and the Armenian genocide, followed by the Great Depression, the communist purges, the starving of Ukraine, and the Rape of Nanjing, bleeding in World War II, the Holocaust, and violent struggles for colonial independence.” Throw in the Korean War, Vietnam, the extermination of millions in Cambodia, and on, and on, and on.

Everyone reads a different book, but in my case Von Drehle’s recall of repeated attempts at global suicide exist as a modern reminder of just how small our problems are today.