Bookshelf Interview with Christopher Kelly

In March 2018, Olivia spoke to American author and historian Christopher Kelly. They talk about the content of his books, and the sense of fulfilment that accompanies writing historical literature. His bookshelf choices vary from books he has sentimental attachments to, to literature he is in awe of stylistically. After earning a BA in Philosophy from UC Berkeley in 1981, he worked for nearly twenty years in the Television industry on the West coast. Exiting the TV industry in 1997, Kelly served on numerous company and non-profit boards. He is the past Chairman of Chyron Corporation (now ChyronHego). America Invades: All the Countries the Americans Have Ever Invaded was his first book. Kelly and his co-author, English historian Stuart Laycock, wrote Italy Invades: How Italians Have Conquered the World, published in 2015. Following these publications, Kelly edited and introduced a memoir that was written by his great grandfather, Thomas Tileston Wells. Entitled An Adventure in 1914, the memoir concerns an American family on the brink of World War I, and was published in 2016. In 2017, Kelly and Laycock published America Invaded: A State by State Guide to Fighting on American Soil, and they are currently working on 100 Fighting Celts: From Boudicca to MacArthur which will be published in 2019. Kelly’s editorials have appeared in USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, the New York Daily News and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is married and has three children, and lives in London and Seattle. OM: How did you realise you wanted to become a writer? Were you always interested in military history? I have had a lifelong passion for military history. I have been a blogger since 2011, where I often write reviews of other books. In 2013, I reviewed Stuart Laycock’s book All the Countries We’ve Invaded. Soon after, we met in a pub in London and became friends with a mutual passion for military history, and have now co-authored three books together. We are currently working on the fourth: 100 Fighting Celts: From Boudicca to MacArthur. OM: Italy seems so disconnected from the word ‘invasion’ in modern day thinking - it is commonly associated with food or fashion, not war - how important is it, do you think, for people to know about Italy and it’s military impact on the rest of the world? Indeed! We wrote Italy Invades in large part due to the stereotype of “unmilitary Italians”. We believed that this is largely a result of the Italian experience in World War II including effective Allied propaganda directed against Italians. We felt that there was a much richer and more interesting story about the role Italian soldiers have played around the world, often fighting under many different flags. There are so many forgotten military historical facts, for example that President Lincoln tried, unsuccessfully, to hire Garibaldi as a general in the Union Army. Or that one in twelve American servicemen in World War II were of Italian ancestry. And so on. OM: Why did you decide to write Italy Invades? Did it seem a logical step from America Invades? Stuart Laycock had written earlier about British invasions involving an Empire upon which the sun never set. America is, undeniably, a world superpower with military involvement in nearly every country on earth. But Italy, and particularly the Roman Empire, is the grandfather of all Empires. There are so many parallels between ancient Rome and the USA today. Both have a Senate. Both used or use the eagle as their military and national symbol. Both fought in Iraq and many other places. Aside from that I have a personal connection to Italy - I am “IBM” – Italian By Marriage. OM: Which book proved more fulfilling or interesting to write - Italy Invades or America Invades? Both books were great fun to write. American history is, of course, more familiar to me. It was fulfilling to write a bit about the small role that my family played in American military history. My dad served in the US Army during the Korean War. I also have two ancestors who invaded Canada during the American Revolution and during the War of 1812. America is not a perfect nation. But I believe that Americans have done many things for which they can be justly proud (such as the liberation of the death camps in WW2). Italy Invades gave me an opportunity to explore another country’s history and to appreciate a different perspective. Italy is not a perfect nation either. The 1936 invasion of Ethiopia, for example, was grotesque. In spite of Mussolini’s Fascist state, I believe that Italians have much to be proud of in their military past as well. Italy Invades is an affirmation of Italian pride. The surprising thing is, perhaps, that it was written by an Englishman and an American! OM: What was your favourite period or event to research and write about? I have always really enjoyed the Napoleonic era. It had outsized characters (Napoleon, Wellington, Andrew Jackson etc.), colourful uniforms and amazing cultural depth – from the discovery of the Rosetta stone to Beethoven. OM: Let's talk about your five book choices. Face of Battle, John Keegan John Keegan’s Face of Battle was a revelation for me. It placed military history in an entirely different context from all I had read before. Instead of X’s and O’s on a map it placed the reader right alongside the soldier that was slogging it out on the fields of Agincourt, Waterloo, etc. This book makes you feel the impact of war on the young men who have always been its principal victims. Campaigns of Napoleon, David Chandler David Chandler’s Campaigns of Napoleon remains a classic on the Napoleonic Wars. It is a detailed account of the vast sweep of these extraordinary conflicts. The book is an argument for Napoleon’s great genius but does not neglect or omit his great flaws. This book helped set me on my path. Candide, Voltaire

My father suggested that I read Candide when I was attending University of California at Berkeley. I majored in Philosophy at Berkeley and had studied Leibniz whose “This is the best of all possible worlds” was parodied so effectively by Voltaire in Candide. Voltaire reminds me always of my late father’s own somewhat cynical sense of humor. Sometimes the strongest arguments are made with laughter rather than pure logic. Centuries after it was written, “Cultivate your garden” remains one of the pithiest bits of wisdom to be found in books. This remains one of my favourite books for young adults. As I wrote in my own blog post about the book: As a champion of liberty and property rights, Voltaire deserves recognition as a founding Conservative. Just as Aristotle provides the Conservative counterpoint to Plato in Classical Greece so does Voltaire’s philosophy provide the antidote for Rousseau during the Enlightenment. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov I read all of Nabokov in college on my own. I was bowled over by his ability to reconstruct his life after the catastrophe of the Russian Revolution which forced him into exile and destroyed his family wealth. In spite of these events, he was able to reinvent himself as a writer in two languages – Russian and English. When he was a young man he supported himself by giving tennis lessons in Cambridge. Happily married to his wife Vera, Vladimir Nabokov was nothing like his creation the tormented Humbert Humbert. Nabokov was absolutely devoted to his artistic craft. He was also incredibly playful and amusing in his works. Lolita is a bizarre and creepy love story. But it is also amazing perspective on the America of the 1950s from the perspective of a Russian exile. Anyone who has ever checked into an American roadside motel can relate at some level to Lolita. Nabokov observes sympathetically and records but does not offer crude judgments on American culture. He was one of the greatest stylists of all time - his sentences were chiseled like diamonds. His Lolita is a classic American novel written by a Russian exile. Masterful, beautiful and, at times, perverse! It is a masterwork in the English language. Against Method, Paul Feyerabend Paul Feyerabend was a professor of mine at the University of California at Berkeley. His book Against Method is brilliantly original. His take on the philosophy of science remains provocative and controversial long after his death. Feyerabend was a great teacher; he received PHDs in Physics and Philosophy. He taught courses in the Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1970s and 1980s (also at Cambridge). I was a Philosophy major but I never took any of his courses for credit; I audited several of them. Feyerabend was very well grounded in the history of scientific development. He was skeptical, irreverent and unbelievably funny in the lecture hall. He was never against the practice or development of science. He was, however, opposed to those ideologues (Popper, Kuhn, etc.) who claimed to have defined scientific method. His book Against Method is not against science but is against those who attempt to propagandize and exploit in the name of science.