I'm not sure. If it were a history of barbed wire it could be interesting, but instead it just seems to be an excuse for the author to parrot his own political

I'm not sure. If it were a history of barbed wire it could be interesting, but instead it just seems to be an excuse for the author to parrot his own political opinions about the current situation at the Hungarian border via guilt-by-association to a bunch of other uses of barbed wire. Barely mentioned: cattle, the original and still the main purpose of barbed wire. I highly recommend the wikipedia article instead https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbed_wire to anyone actually interested in barbed wire. It's odd to think that until the late 19th century nobody had invented a reasonable way to actually keep cows in one place.