My (b.1959) generation, the tail-end boomers giving way to GenX, took our boomer elders as guides. I was about to write: “Big mistake.” But coincidentally, at the exact instant I put the period on this essay’s first sentence, the piped-in music here aboard the Rusadir, a cruise-ship-size ferry plying the Mediterranean between Malaga and Melilla,...

Most wars are in some sense wars of attrition. Both sides endure losses, get worn down, and reach the point that one of them loses the will or ability to keep fighting. The loser then accepts the winner’s terms. Alternately, both sides can grow exhausted and settle for less than victory. Normally wars of attrition...

The German word for “henpecked husband” is Der Pantoffelheld, which literally means “slipper hero.” Such a man is living “under his wife’s slipper.” It apparently derives from the older German idiom unter dem Pantoffel stehen (“to stand under the slipper”), i.e. “to be under someone’s thumb.” When Germans talk about Der Pantoffelheld they don’t mean...