
The Battle of Waterloo: A Near-Run Thing - pshaw
http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21651775-appallingly-bloody-yet-decisive-battle-waterloo-june-1815-deserves
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christkv
If you have a deeper interest in Napoleon I heartily recommend the Napoleon
podcast
[http://napoleonbonapartepodcast.com](http://napoleonbonapartepodcast.com).

One of the things I learned was that the British started the wars and
continuously broke the peace agreements. Still to this day most people think
the reverse. It has to stand as one of the most successfully executed
propaganda campaigns of history that people still think it 200 years later.

And yeah he was not short. He is listed as 5.2 but in modern units that is 5.7
which was above average height for the age.

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bambax
> _aimless wandering in the pouring rain of the Compte d 'Erlon..._

 _compte_ => account

Count => _Comte_

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PhantomGremlin
I can't understand why the British allowed Napoleon to go into exile a second
time. My sentiments would be more along what the Prussians wanted to do.

Instead of just being a cliche, "heads will roll for this" should have been
something that Napoleon should have experienced firsthand.

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SCHiM
The article does not match the title given, you will find no condensed account
of the battle of waterloo here, only vague hints and advertisements to make
you buy the books referenced.

A more suiting title would be "Books about the battle of waterloo."

In short: advertisements.

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icegreentea
The economist runs a bunch of book reviews every issue. It's an advertisement
as much as any review is an advertisement. Within the context of their print
issue, there'd be absolutely no way to miss that these were book reviews -
it's an entire section.

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jimhefferon
So I can't stand it, so I'm going to blurt it out.

Yesterday, or maybe the day before, HN had another article by the _Stop
Drawing Dead Fish_ guy [http://worrydream.com/](http://worrydream.com/), which
is one of those things that when you see it you say, "Of course he's right."
Today we have these reviews of fresh books about a major battle and while they
are probably very good (I thought to buy the BC one, myself), _they are dead
fish._ It's a battle, and a complex one! Why are there not dynamic maps of the
field, where you can fly through like on Google maps and that are situated
depending on where in the book you are when you click on them? Why is there
not a timeline so that on each page you can click to see what is happening at
that moment on other parts of the field? Why can't you click on people's name
and have a little bio pop up? At least put names in color so I can tell who
they fought for? Why can't I click on a place name and hear it pronounced?

Why are there not videos of soldier's uniforms, and of armaments of the time?
Music people sang as they marched into battle? If you carry this book to the
field, will it tell you, "you are now at the spot Wellington stood on at 12
noon"?

I get that one reason is the lack of a format. I write some math materials and
while I have looked, that I know of there is no format that is (1)
typographically acceptable (that I have seen, that lets HTML and the Word
formats out), (2) dynamic (PDF under Linux won't go), and (3) reasonably open.
Very frustrating.

Maybe I've got it all wrong, and I certainly do not have the technical chops
to do anything about this, but it seems, to me anyway, like there is a hole
here. Anyway, end of blurt.

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danso
So...basically, the days of Flash apps and navigation, like when local
restaurants would pay some dev godknowshowmuch to make a whizbang Flash app
that made it impossible to find just the phone number or address without
clicking some obscure button placed in an erratic location?

The technology to make what you want is possible. It's been arguably possible
for a very long time. But it's hard to make, and hard to design. And that's
even before considering mass usability aspects.

I may be getting old but text with graphics and linear scrolling are just
fine. I expect to be entertained by linear movies and TV shows and podcasts
for a very long time. We've had the technology and capacity to store "choose-
your-own-ending" movies on DVDs for a very long time...and yet, that almost
never happens, for reasons of usability, consumer enjoyment, and production
overhead.

Hell, we've had the ability to do pop-ups and choose-your-own-adventure books
for centuries now. And I'm glad most novels and books have been linear page
turners.

