War and Our World
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4.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
John Keegan, widely considered the greatest military historian of our time and the author of acclaimed volumes on ancient and modern warfare--including, most recently, The First World War, a national bestseller--distills what he knows about the why’s and how’s of armed conflict into a series of brilliantly concise essays.
Is war a natural condition of humankind? What are the origins of war? Is the modern state dependent on warfare? How does war affect the individual, combatant or noncombatant? Can there be an end to war? Keegan addresses these questions with a breathtaking knowledge of history and the many other disciplines that have attempted to explain the phenomenon. The themes Keegan concentrates on in this short volume are essential to our understanding of why war remains the single greatest affliction of humanity in the twenty-first century, surpassing famine and disease, its traditional companions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Keegan, bestselling historian of the First and Second World Wars, synthesizes his views on war and peace in this series of five lectures given in 1998 and now published as a set of essays. Drawing on a lifetime of study and writing, Keegan ranges widely over his subject, delving into the history of war, the character of a professional soldier, the diverse views of anthropologists on the origin of social violence, the advent of high-tech warfare and many other relevant issues. Keegan argues that war takes so many forms and mutates so rapidly that it is impossible to define precisely. The author's best descriptive definition is that war is "collective killing for some collective purpose." Today, Keegan believes, the most catastrophic form of war, the use of nuclear weapons, is unlikely to occur, although he does not address the recent entry of India and Pakistan, among other nations, into the nuclear club. Currently, war occurs most often in multiethnic, underdeveloped areas of the world and is driven by poverty, ideology and cultural insecurity. Keegan puts the death toll in the world's wars over the past 50 years at some 50 million. One practical suggestion he offers is to control the proliferation of assault rifles, whose low price, high rate of fire and nearly universal availability have made large-scale slaughter possible anywhere. War and Our World is replete with such insights and ideas, lucidly expressed by a master in his field.
