In his new book, "Human Smoke", Nicholson Baker taps into letters, diaries, conversations and newspaper clippings to paint a portrait of war as the ultimate human calamity.

Its extraordinariness is in its ordinariness; its lack of pretense, so common amongst mainstream historians and pundits.

In plain-spoken, straight-forward language, Baker paints a portrait of power-mongering political leaders that is unequaled by anything on today’s bookshelves.

I know this is fulsome praise, but when it comes to books, which give the reader a sense of "being there", Human Smoke is unparalleled.

Here’s a short excerpt:

"Ezra Kraus, a botanist from the University of Chicago, had an idea for how to win the war with japan. It was December 18th, 1941.

Spraying rice fields with toxic levels of growth hormones, Kraus thought, "would be a feasible and comparatively simple means of destruction of rice crops, the staple food of the Japanese."

  Krause’s work led him to experiment with two synthetic hormones – 2,4-D   and 2,4,5 -T – components of a defoliant that would later come to be called Agent Orange".

Baker reveals facts that many of us have either forgotten or have treated with a sense of denial. He shows us the anti-Semitism of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the cynical warmongering of Winston Churchill. He also shows us the pathetic reality of pseudo men like Himmler, Goebbels and Hitler.

Most of all, he gives the reader a deep and abiding insight into the true madness of war.

His finished work is a source of light in a darkening world.

I refuse to be caught up in the details of history and prefer to dwell on the truths that are revealed. In some ways, we have been continuing on the path of the autocrats, the dictators and the warmongers. The wish to impose our will on others and bring them to emulate our philosophy and way of life seems overwhelming.

The truth that Baker underlines so effectively and so clearly, leads me to a tentative grasp of the repetition of patterns that were set in those years following WW1 and including WW2. We have had cleverly managed coups, like the one in 2002, when George W. Bush used the U.S, Supreme Court to gain power.

We have seen the horrors of Vietnam.

And also, we have seen the militaristic overthrow of democracies in Latin America and the Middle East and many others over the decades.

The immutable truth is that in all of these instances, military power has never worked for ordinary people. It has only worked for those who derive profit and enjoyment from the practice of war and the violence and destruction that attends it.   

Baker shows that leaders who win wars, win them by slaughtering innocents. He shows too that leaders who lose wars, lose them by slaughtering innocents.

You can order Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization from Amazon by clicking on the title.