History's wisdom comes in the form of an oracle

The ongoing history war has continued to produce some excellent writing.

I particularly liked this article by Christopher Clark which argued about the dangers of drawing easy lessons from history:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/15/1914-conflicts-history-repeating-first-world-war

I think the phrase:

"History's wisdom comes to us not in the form of pre-packaged lessons but of oracles, whose relevance to our current predicaments has to be puzzled over."
  

is a brilliant rejoinder to the many politicians who are bound to use the anniversary to draw too many facile comparisons over the next four years.

I have The Sleepwalkers still on my bookshelf, and hope to use an imminent long flight to make a serious start on it.