McFate, Montgomery, ed. 2024. Dr. Seuss and the art of war: Secret military lessons. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN: 978-1-5381-9362-4

Petra Hendrickson
Northern Michigan University
Marquette, Michigan, USA
pehendri@nmu.edu

Dr. Seuss and the art of war: Secret military lessons, edited by Montgomery McFate, provides a number of chapters linking the works of Dr. Seuss to themes and concepts in military strategy and national security policy. The volume draws on well-known Dr. Seuss staples like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hears a Who, to slightly less prominent works like Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose, to significantly more obscure works like his wartime animated films in the Private Snafu series. Each chapter focuses on a different work and highlights how plot points and language connect to considerations important to understanding military strategy, national security, and conflict. 

The book is divided into five sections, each with a different area of focus. Prior to the official start of the book, retired general David Petraeus provides the foreword, in which he exhorts readers to take Dr. Seuss and the idea of its having military insights seriously. Petraeus draws his own connections to various Seussian works, independent of those in the rest of the volume, and it is a shame that some of his insights are not followed up on in the book, but rather left as brief statements of connection without further exploration. The sections of the book are as follows:

Part I. Introduction

Chapter 1. “Learning the Art of War from Dr. Seuss” by Montgomery McFate

Part II. Bounding the Subject

Chapter 2. “I Had Trouble Getting to Solla Sollew and Strategy” by Antulio J. Echevarria II

Chapter 3. “Oh, the Places You’ll Go! and Grand Strategy in Outer Space” by Saadia M. Pekkanen

Chapter 4. “Horton Hears a Who and International Human Rights Law” by John Hursh

Part III. Specialized Domains of Warfare

Chapter 5. “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose and Environmental Security” by Rebecca Pincus and Montgomery McFate

Chapter 6. “The Cat in the Hat and Cyber Warfare” by Jon R. Lindsay and Michael Poznansky

Chapter 7. “Private Snafu and Political Propaganda” by Kevin P. Eubanks

Chapter 8. “Yertle the Turtle and Authoritarianism and Resistance” by Katherine Blue Carroll

Chapter 9. “Hunches in Bunches: Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making” by Genevieve Lester, John Nagl, and Montgomery McFate

Part IV. Theories of Warfare

Chapter 10. “Horton and the Kwuggerbug and Deception in International Relations” by Chris C. Demchak

Chapter 11. “Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? and Luck in Warfare” by Erich Henry Wagner and Montgomery McFate

Chapter 12. “The Butter Battle Book and Deterrence and Escalation” by Sam J. Tangredi

Part V. Consequences of War

Chapter 13. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Traumatic Stress” by Montgomery McFate

Each chapter title is a relatively concise and accurate summary of the focus of the chapter. Although most chapters rely on some creative interpretations of Dr. Seuss’ work, some do so more effectively than others. In this respect, Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 12 are especially interesting and well-crafted. Chapters 7 ( “Private Snafu and Political Propaganda” by Kevin P. Eubanks) and 8 (“Yertle the Turtle and Authoritarianism and Resistance” by Katherine Blue Carroll) discuss propaganda and authoritarianism, respectively, but rely on interpretations that aren’t especially creative — yet, both claims of connection are straightforward and in cases supported by Dr. Seuss’ own explanations of his work. Regarding Chapter 7, the Private Snafu cartoons were Seuss’ wartime training films for the U.S. military during World War II. In this series of films, which were commissioned by the military, Private Snafu makes a series of blunders, either through laziness, carelessness, or lack of regard for consequences, that prove inconvenient at best, and disastrous at worst, for Snafu himself, the troops around him, and the success of U.S. military operations overall. Interpreting the Private Snafu films as propaganda is uncontroversial, as they were aimed at helping to socialize new recruits into the military and were based on its expectations of how soldiers should conduct themselves on base, in theater, and in combat. They furthermore tried to contrast the noble U.S. war goals with those of the country’s enemies. 

In Chapter 8, Carroll provides another straightforward interpretation of work by Dr. Seuss, an interpretation that had been provided by Seuss himself in interviews, that Yertle the turtle is a despot, and Mack the turtle is brave for standing up to the tyrant. However, unlike Eubanks, Carroll extends this argument further and provides new insight through her consideration of why individuals opt to protest absent broader support structures and participation, bringing in apt comparisons to the Arab Spring protests that emerged in 2010 and 2011.

To provide further discussion of the chapters that were more innovative, Chapter 4 rounds out Part II with a consideration of “Horton Hears a Who and International Human Rights Law,” by John Hursh. In hearing the unseeable Whos and recognizing their dignity as individuals and a group with a right to exist, Horton seeks to protect the Whos from the various machinations of Horton’s co-residents of the Jungle of Nool, who seek to destroy the speck of dust the Whos live on, as well imprison and torture Horton for his efforts. These actions highlight aspects of international human rights, and human rights law, such as listening to stakeholders, doing no harm, exercising tolerance, and collective action (in which the Whos all work together to make themselves audible to the other creatures in the Jungle of Nool). The examples used in this chapter feel more concrete and somewhat less of a stretch than those in the previous two chapters, and the wayHorton symbolizes international human rights remains clear throughout the chapter. 

Part III, Specialized Domains of Warfare, begins with Rebecca Pincus and Montgomery McFate’s chapter on “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose and Environmental Security” (Chapter 5). The choice of this chapter is interesting, as The Lorax is a much more straightforward and emblematic environmental cautionary tale, and illustrates many of the same concepts as Thidwick does, alongside the additional familiarity of the story. The authors use Thidwick to illustrate the concept of environmental carrying capacity and its collapse if overloaded. Pincus and McFate highlight the challenges presented in formulating environmental policy by the tension between short-term advantages (to exploit more) and long-term consequences (the depletion of resources and an inability to recover from previous policy). These challenges form the key dilemma of policy concerning common pool resources, in which individuals (or states) have an incentive to use more than their allocation because individually doing so will have no major effect, while all individuals (and states) doing so causes suboptimal outcomes for everyone.The authors effectively connects Thidwick’s accumulation of creatures in his antlers to the environment’s ability to cope with human behavior, as well as the consequences of overuse (Thidwick sheds his antlers and runs away, while the animals he has been carrying are left as the victims of several hunters). 

Chapter 6, “The Cat in the Hat and Cyber Warfare,” by Jon R. Lindsay and Michael Poznansky, compares the actions of the children in The Cat in the Hat to states and other actors in the cyber realm, which are often vulnerable to cyber attacks based on their own actions and behaviors in cyberspace, such as falling victim to cyber attackers’ tricks (just as the children in the story allow the cat to enter the house over the objections of their fish). Further, once attacks have begun, they can escalate in their scope and destructiveness (Lindsay and Poznansky here reference the unleashing of Thing One and Thing Two). 

Finally, Chapter 12, “The Butter Battle Book and Deterrence and Escalation,” by Sam J. Tangredi, rounds out Part IV. In this story, the Yooks and Zooks are locked in a stalemate over whether to butter their bread on the top or the bottom and make successive efforts to gain the upper hand over the other militarily with ever-more impressive and destructive weapons. The parade of weapons are clearly the steps involved in a pattern of escalation. Like the Yooks and Zooks, countries also seek more sophisticated and powerful weapons, in the hopes that possessing such weapons will deter others from challenging them. However, this pattern was more or less what unfolded with the nuclear arms race, and escalation with the hope of deterrence makes everyone less secure, because there will always be an impulse to acquire the next best weapon. 

I used Dr. Seuss and the Art of War as a supplement to two other books about war in a class entitled War and Peace in the 21st Century. I divided the class into three main units, looking at interstate war, civil war, and terrorism. The books assigned for the interstate (Mitchell and Vasquez, 2025) and civil war (Mason and Mitchell 2023) units were densely empirical and formally academic. My students generally struggled to identify the main points and synthesize them into a broader understanding of war, often getting bogged down in academic jargon and tables of statistical results. However, they found Dr. Seuss and the Art of War much more accessible, and the fact that it drew on stories they knew well from childhood also made it more effective in helping them understand themes of warfare. I don’t know that I would have assigned Dr. Seuss and the Art of War without some kind of additional reading that is more formally academic in nature, but it very effectively places academic theories from a variety of dimensions of warfare in a new package that students were able to connect with.

In addition to being used in its entirety, it can also be fruitful to assign individual chapters from the book in a wider variety of classes. For example, Chapter 4, “Horton Hears a Who and International Human Rights Law” by John Hursh, could be used in an international law and/or human rights course. Chapter 5, “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose and Environmental Security” by Rebecca Pincus and Montgomery McFate, would make a fine addition to a course featuring a coverage of environmental politics or sustainability. Chapter 6, “The Cat in the Hat and Cyber Warfare” by Jon R. Lindsay and Michael Poznansky could be effectively incorporated in a class on cyber security. Chapter 8,  “Yertle the Turtle and Authoritarianism and Resistance” by Katherine Blue Carroll, could be useful in a class on social movements, authoritarianism, or even just an introductory comparative politics class to illustrate regime types and repression. Chapter 9, “Hunches in Bunches: Intelligence and National Security Decision-Making” by Genevieve Lester, John Nagl, and Montgomery McFate, would find a fine home in a foreign policy/national security class. Finally, Chapter 12, “The Butter Battle Book and Deterrence and Escalation” by Sam J. Tangredi, could be used in an introductory international relations class to illustrate key concepts related to international security and conflict. 

References

Mason, T.D., and S.M. Mitchell. (Eds.). (2023). What do we know about civil wars? 2nd ed.
Rowman & Littlefield. 

Mitchell, S.M., and J.A. Vasquez. (Eds.). (2025). What do we know about war? Revised 3rd ed.
Rowman &  Littlefield. 

Author Bio

Petra Hendrickson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northern Michigan University. Their research interests focus on Political Science pedagogy, with an emphasis on active learning, and genocide and mass killing. They teach classes in international relations and comparative politics, including on genocide, American foreign policy, and East and Southeast Asian politics. They have also taught two honors program seminars on interdisciplinary approaches to the social sciences, using Harry Potter and Star Trek as the pop culture vehicles for these discussions.