Of Memory Holes and Memory Buriers

Hello—from the past.
This is one of those very rare G-Files that I’m actually writing in advance. Tomorrow—your today—is Yom Kippur, and while I’m not the practicing Jew I should be, and I don’t exactly obey the forms, I also don’t like to flout them publicly. So, I’m writing this in advance and avoiding any political punditry.
There’s a lot of buzz about a new book, American Midnight, by Adam Hochschild. The book is about a period I have a longstanding interest in: America during World War I.
Now, I’ve barely started it—though I have been hunting and pecking through the Kindle version for all sorts of stuff in it already—and I’m sincerely looking forward to finishing it, even though I can already tell I’ll have disagreements. So, I’ll make three points, one fairly petty, one somewhat petty, and one entirely substantive.