A historian. Her book The Guns of August was one of the definitive histories of the early stages of wwi back in the 60s, popularizing many of the famous misconceptions about the war, such as the schlieffen plan and the whole "droves of soldiers mowed down by machine gun fire" or UK good, France and Germany stupid. It's a brilliantly written book; one of the reasons why it is so exceedingly popular even today. However it is extraordinarily out of date now, and is generally seen to be excessively anglophilic, while not really seeming to understand the phrase "hindsight is 20/20" much at all. When I first came here I had just been given that book as a Christmas present and tried using it to counter I believe Dachs in a wwi thread. That ended disastrously, but it was immensely helpful in being a violent introduction to the notion of historiography, and not all history being, well not necessarily "good" per se, but "current" I suppose would be the correct word. Although I could have my timing off as I think that happened just prior to me stumbling my way into #nes. I think my first history beatdown came when I tried to tell Masada that absolutely no notion of Keynesian policy existed prior to the Great Depression, or possibly that no notion of capitalism existed prior to Smith. Man have I come a looong way lol.
Wow. Sounds like something I would have said back then haha. I would probably say that my opinion on the matter has since reversed completely since then. Funny.