Bloomsbury Academic are a fabulous series. It is like a mystery prize, you never know what you are going to get. Previous stories I have read ranged from offbeat quirky to forgettable. Bulletproof Vest has now set the bar very high. Rosen carefully unpicks the stitches holding the armour together to dispel its illusion of safety and recast it as a security blanket. It was fascinating. It look me completely out of my regular reading zone and I was absolutely riveted.

Thank you to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Academic for the reading copy.

An interesting read on a topic I did not know much about prior to reading! I liked that this had several different angles - there was something for the police/law enforcement perspective, something for those who want to learn about women in science, and something for those who want some insight into the field of journalism. A short read in which I learned a lot.

Another Object Lesson book, and one that I felt would be more specific that Political Sign (which I enjoyed but was a hugely broad project for a monogram). Here I could see a lot of potential in talking about the development of body armour, of what bulletproof an stab-proof vests symbolise in culture. The concept of being bulletproof, and how that plays with being the opposite of a weaponry and the kind of privilege it might bestow on people wearing them. The overestimation of the power of vests in films, how they play in the military industrial complex view of conflict resolution.

It is bad form to criticise a book for what it is not, but on the whole it is none of those things. Rosen is a foreign correspondent, and some time war journalist, and to some degree I appreciated this very personal take on what his own PPE has meant to him (and its eventual uselessness). I liked the conclusions made that bullet-proof vests are no match for decent relationships made with people in the know, with fixers, translators and in country knowledge. But this is a monograph which is overly personal. I think I know why it starts with the authors failed young suicide attempt by handgun (there are some delicious ironies), but if 80% of the rest of the book is also going to be war correspondent memoirs it stops being about bulletproof vests, and actually about Rosen. There are not that many fascinating bits of trivia or history here, beyond an chapter of the fascinating woman who invented Kevlar, There is a technical, near listical bit on the development of full armour, and its rise and fall, but no statistics on the efficacy of actual bulletproof vests. And again like Political Sign, this is a relentlessly US centric narrative - there is no consideration on how armour or bulletproof vests are used by the other side, barely the obvious comparison between the bulletproof vest and the bomb filled vest.

I think these monographs are great ideas, and are full of potential, but the two I have read have suffered from commissioning people who already knock out long reads for newspapers to write them. I liked Political Sign, I just wanted a broader perspective. Bulletproof Vest was a compelling narrative and it does go a long way towards making its key point (BPV's are basically symbols rather than useful), but it is of a tradition of reflecting the subject through a very personal lense and even then I thought the subject was probably just Rosen and his own neuroses.

After Coffee, I decided to try another of the Bloomsbury Object Lessons books, to see whether I'd misunderstood the gist of the series. Fortunately, Bulletproof Vest was a better fit for my expectations: a moving personal story woven around the object's history. It's a tale, first and foremost, of the human desire to both destroy and protect. Rosen experiences the former in a cataclysm of depression when, with his self-worth shredded and with years of self-loathing behind him, he comes within a hair's breadth of suicide. Ironically, for what follows, his weapon of choice is a gun. Later, having clawed his way out of the depths, he channels his self-destructive instincts in a new direction, thanks to his work as a journalist. 'Pointing the lens outward,' he writes, 'would allow me to heal my inner disruption'. And so he signs up for work as a war correspondent in Iraq, a job which will bring him face to face with the innate human desire to conquer and kill, but which will also require him to take concrete, proactive steps to protect himself. Rosen buys his first bulletproof vest, and thus the story begins.

We've heard the words PPE (personal protective equipment) a lot in the last few weeks. In this context, however, they mean not the masks and gowns of a medical ward, but the helmets and flak jackets of front-line combat. Rosen finds his own PPE online, via the aptly-named website bulletproofme.com (who are, perhaps inevitably, based in Texas). There's no doubt that he needs to take something with him to Iraq: being a war journalist is a dangerous job, after all ('In 2015, 110 reporters were killed and nearly 200 were jailed worldwide'). But, as Rosen prepares for his posting, he begins to wonder what the point is of such front-line PPE. Some doubts arise during an obligatory class in which journalists are taught how to deal with being kidnapped, beaten and jailed. What use would a bulletproof vest be in such circumstances? And what does it mean to place all your faith in a vest stuffed with ceramic panels? Even the best flak jacket isn't bullet-proof, but only bullet resistant. There are some strikes that no amount of bullet-proofing can resist. As Rosen heads out to Mosul - the start of a journey that will take in visits to Syria and to numerous sites at which allied forces are struggling against those of Daesh - he begins to think more and more about what truly constitutes protection in war zones. A press badge? A bulletproof vest that marks you out as a foreigner - someone worthy of protection - perhaps, a target? Or should we instead choose to place our trust in people?

Rosen uses his bulletproof vest as a springboard for a brief history of the evolution of body-armour. That's what the vest is, after all: the modern successor of the cuirasses and chain mail of the ancient and medieval worlds. He introduces us to the Dendra Panoply, the oldest known cuirass, made in Mycenean Greece between 1600 and 1100 BC (to my delight, he spared a nod for the classic boar's-tusk helmet). There must have been earlier forms of body-armour unknown to us now, for helmets had been developed in Sumeria some 1,600 years earlier, and humans had been using offensive weaponry - spears, arrows, knives - for 60,000 years. As time passed, armour became ever more practical and sophisticated. The cumbersome body-sheaths of the Mycenean age gave way to the lighter bronze breastplates of Ancient Greece, and these in turn were adapted by the Romans, who switched bronze for iron, and added chain mail. I always think of Norman England when I think of chain mail, but according to Rosen chain mail was being used by Celtic tribes around 400 BC. I'll have to do some more reading on the history of armour.

Athough Rosen mentions Eastern varieties of armour, such as scale and lamellar (i.e. samurai-style) armour, he focuses most on Western technologies. He speaks at some length about chain mail, making an interesting economic point that I hadn't fully registered before. Chain male was relatively cheap and accessible, because it required comparatively unskilled labour. All a smith had to do was make a sequence of interlocking rings, which could be easily repaired if damaged. This was a far cry from the expert skills needed to forge plate-armour. Hence the knights of medieval and Renaissance Europe, with their splendid full-body suits of plate-armour - versus the ordinary fighting man, who more often than not wore a brigadine, a padded cloth jerkin, over a chain-mail shirt. When we see suits of armour in museums nowadays, it's tempting to assume that they were all for much the same purpose, but Rosen points out that there was a crucial difference between jousting armour and battle armour. Jousting armour was much heavier, weighing as much as 50kg, presumably to help anchor the knight to his horse. (But, the poor horse!) Then of course there are ceremonial armours, which were expensive not just for the amount of metal involved, but for the elaborate decoration - often engraved or inlaid with gold.

There was much to learn here. I read with fascination that the Aztecs used cotton for armour, soaked in 'saltwater brine, which crystallized when dried', and which afforded protection from the obsidian blades and spearheads used by rival warriors. And Rosen also opened my eyes to the way that armour became less important as offensive weaponry became more lethal. Compare the men of a medieval army, with their chain mail and brigadines, with a troop of First World War soldiers, in their cloth uniforms, perhaps with a small area of chain mail to protect the heart. What was the point in spending vast amounts of money on armour for soldiers whom it couldn't possibly protect? Nothing was going to stand up to machine gun fire and, later, to bombs, missiles and mines. (You can understand why Rosen concludes that bulletproof vests are primarily psychological comfort-blankets, giving the impression rather than the assurance of safety.)

One final very interesting section recounted the developments in textile technology that led to the modern bulletproof vest. Rosen introduced me to Stephanie Kwolek, a remarkable chemist and inventor who developed Kevlar, the fabric now used for such vests. Kwolek benefitted from the greater opportunities available to women during the Second World War, enrolling in 1942 at Margaret Morrison Carnegie College to read chemistry, and graduating in 1946. She went on to work at Dupont, a research company which counted Spandex among its products, and which finally patented her synthetic fabric Kevlar in 1974. What's so interesting is that Kevlar was never meant to protect people, although it's now most famous for this. It was originally designed as a covering for aircraft wheels, to make them more resilient and thereby to help conserve petrol use. Nowadays it's been added into all sorts of products, so that we often use Kevlar in our everyday lives and leisure without even realising it. An extraordinary discovery, and a brilliant inventor.

But the question remains for Rosen. What is the purpose of bulletproof material? As a war correspondent, what does it mean to be seen wearing a bulletproof vest? Does it show your value, or does it create a PPE divide between you and the people you're interviewing, who don't have the luxury of expensive kit? When our lives are on the line, do we cling to our precious vests, or do we have to learn to trust those around us? Rosen is sensitive, thoughtful and reflective about such questions:

"Bulletproof material is only so flexible as to allow fewer thoughts of worry to permeate one's deliberations. Bulletproofing does not protect against backstabbers or fixers and translators who may sell you out to the highest bidder. Bulletproofing is in fact impersonal and rigid, reserved only for the indifference of a bullet."

One of the most enjoyable instalments in this series so far - at least, among those I've read. I think it's helped by the fact that Rosen's personal story really is directly relevant to the object he's chosen. I never had the feeling with this, as I did with Coffee, that it was just a bit of an excuse for stream-of-consciousness. On the contrary, Rosen weaves together personal testimony and historical fact in a concise, pacy and engaging story which does exactly what it says on the tin.

This review will be published on my blog on 28 April 2020 at the following link:
https://theidlewoman.net/2020/04/28/bulletproof-vest-2020-kenneth-r-rosen

We have a female materials chemist to thank for Kevlar, don't you know, although the thing was only developed because DuPont were trying to make car tyres less weighty in an impending oil crisis. Nowadays the list of things it's used to make is quite eye-boggling. But of course its headline use is in personal protection, in bullet-resistant body armour. Our author, having spent several years in Iraq and elsewhere in the Levant as a war correspondent on the tails of ISIS, knows full well the weight, feel and benefit of such security. This book, more memoir than you'd perhaps expect (it even begins with him attempting suicide), is about the use of the material, and a personal look at what use he got out of it. Because the easiest thing to defeat such bulletproof (sic) material is a human being, and at the same time the greatest protection one might need, is a friend.

Every book in this series seems to want to come at its subject in wilfully personal ways, and many times that's to the detriment of the reader learning and/or enjoying anything. I can't say I learnt what I expected to learn from this, as I had no such prejudging under my belt. I can't say I enjoyed it a heck of a lot. But the fact the essay boils down to the psychology of the vests concerned was a surprise, and a not unpleasant one. It's told with authority, based of course on such personal experience, and conveys a surprisingly moody feel for what is supposed to be a non-fictional guide to something material some people just have lying around. It might make you question your own use of metaphorical (or real) comfort blankets like Linus. Our author ends the book using a different set of comforters, but a bulletproof vest isn't one of them.

Three and a half stars.

Object Lessons presents a deeper look at everyday objects. For some a buletproof vest is not an everyday object but for those working in securty, law enforcement, the military etc, it certainly is.

Kenneth Rosen is a war correspondent and he becomes familiar with his bulletproof vest.

What makes this book hugely interesting is that, in its opening pages, Rosen completely bares his soul and narrates a botched suicide attempt with a pistol. We then jump forward to him preparing for his first assignment in a war zone and his purchases. Of course the body armour factors big in this section.

Once Rosen reaches the war zone he finds that his initial conceit that he would endlessly wear the body armour quickly fades away and he hardly ever uses it. In his first assignment he touches the body armour more than wears it, he treats it like a comfort blanket.

Rosen weaves his experiences and anxieties of working in war zones in a very deft and readable fashion, he really is an excellent writer. The body armour sometimes looms large in his narrative, at other times it fades into the background.

At first I thought this was strange as the book is about a single object. However, this style makes sense as the book is about the particular set of body armour that Rosen purchased and its proximity to his life waxes and wanes. In the final analysis, is this not the nature of all physical objects?

This book is short, readable and very thought-provoking, I look forward to reading other books in this series.

This is one of the most thoughtful and haunting of the books in this unexpectedly marvellous series: Rosen takes his bulletproof vest as a starting point but really this is a meditation on danger and self-protection, and where the latter might inhibit rather than preserve life. The most pressing chapters are where he writes of his trips to war zones of the recent Middle East as a NYT journalist. In between, there are some brief histories of shields and weapons, of the formation of kevlar, but these interrupt the real substance of the book. Honest and intimate, this is surprisingly introspective.