From Above: War, Violence, and Verticality

Above: War, Violence, and Verticality Edited by Peter Adey, Mark Whitehead, and Alison J. Williams London, England, UK: Hurst Publishing, 2014 376 pages $30.52 (paper) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For intellectual plebeians like your reviewer, any book with a made-for-academia word like in its tide might be a bit off-putting. And, indeed, much or most of Above is written for--and by academics. The majority of the predominantly British contributors are professors of geography or the liberal arts. They are not specialists in military or strategic matters. It would be a mistake, however, for military professionals to dismiss this volume because important chunks of it do, in fact, build the reader's intellectual database in a positive and insightful way. Moreover, it allows those who do have expertise in related military or strategic matters the opportunity to see how other thoughtful thinkers view their craft. Verticality, it seems, is professor-speak to describe the aerial view. According to the editors, this perspective has brought about seismic shifts for life on the ground. They add that the book makes significant moves to understand the view from above within the pathos and passions of the societies that have produced and consume[d] it, perspective that art, literature and other forms of expression have been more used to exploring. Perhaps so, but the approach the editors took presents real challenges to creating a coherent narrative as there are, in addition to the triumvirate of editors, thirteen different contributors, each of whom penned separate chapters. Getting a baker's dozen of academics to fit into any sort of logical framework is no small task. In their effort to do so, the editors divided the writings into three sections, respectively entitled Science, Militarism and Distance; Aesthetics, Distortion and the View from Below; and From the Close to the Remote. Along with an energetic--and editorially heroic--organizational effort in the introduction, they sought to provide a context for chapters diverse not just in subject matter, but in style--and verbosity--as well. The results were mixed, and will likely mean readers will skim or skip some chapters. For sure, a couple may be obtuse to all but the most dedicated specialist. Others--such as one laboriously entitled Project Transparent Earth and the Autoscopy of Aerial Targeting: The Visual Geopolitics of the Underground--contain some nuggets but only if one perseveres long enough to discover them. Still, there are, however, a few gems. The chapter on balloons is fascinating, tracing not just the technical development, but also with the psychological impact the then never-before-experienced aerial perspectives had. The author highlights individuals who grasped the military potential of verticality along with the contribution that ballooning made to militarized aeromobility. In his chapter, Line of Decent, Canadian Professor Derek Gregory grapples not so much with verticality (though he sprinkles such terms as political technology of vision and visuality), but with the whole notion of aerial attack and the risk to civilians by surveying such operations from World War II bombings through drone operations in contemporary conflicts. …

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