OMG, still another timesink

twistedchick linked to a newsletter written by the former editor of Stars and Stripes about what's facing the US military now with TFG as their commander-in-chief for another go-round. It's grim reading.

I was reading some historical fiction a week or so ago about Desirée Clary Bernadotte, who went from Napoleon's fiancée to an elderly Queen of Sweden. The book was very much like Selinko's classic novel about her from the '50s (a book I nabbed from my mother's library as a teenager), but there's some serious stuff in it about how the post-1789 French military ended up being the tool that gave Napoleon power. Also, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte himself is a fascinating political figure. When we were in Scandinavia in '17 for the Helsinki Worldcon, I found it interesting that the Norwegians still have one of Oslo's main streets named for him (Karl Johans Gate), even though they split from Sweden in 1905.

That's what happens when a history buff that is fascinated by European history from 1789 to 1820 gets thinking about parallels to the current day.

Edited to add: the book is Allison Pataki's The Queen's Fortune.