Similar vibes to a line I'll be using in an open-mic set soon, and looking forward to the groans:

I think my wife's planning a surprise present for me. She keeps hiding things in the kitchen, under tortillas and flatbreads - she's definitely keeping something under wraps.

Sounds very interesting, as always - looking forward to reading the published form some day!

I think MLA stands for Majorly Lamenting Academic.

Darling it's better on Boulevard Gambetta in the ninteenth centuryyy...

Hope you slipped a "trenta percenta" in there.

Have you ever experienced French sirens (which sound like air-raid ones) blaring on the first Wednesday of the month? The first time I heard it was in the archives during my PhD, and it scared the life out of me. Couldn't believe everyone around me was so nonchalant about impending nuclear doom.

This conures an image of my mind of Farage as Finchy from The Office, complaining to Brent that he's put "this poison in my mind" by suggesting Four Non-Blondes sang Don't Speak. Just as ridiculous.

To be fair, he's got a more Irish first name than me, even if my namesake helps me out there.

Well done!

Yeah, really hammers home the taken-for-granted approach we mentioned, doesn't it?

Possibly also Talbot Imlay, ‘Total war,’ Journal of Strategic Studies, 30:3 (2007), pp.547-570; Proctor, Civilians in a World at War (2010); Purseigle, Mobilisation, sacrifice et citoyenneté (2013). But it seems most historians use 'mobilisation' without too much explanation of the term.

You may have already considered this, but Chickering, R., & Förster, S, Great War, total war: combat and mobilization on the Western Front, 1914-1918 (2013). Other stuff on total war, including edited volumes by Chickering and Förster, could be useful, given mobilisation as a key totalising factor.

Maybe with a third* off?

*Thiers/tiers, natch.

A minor victory - well done!

I'm sure we could all make a *communal* effort to email you to increase the numbers.