Social Sciences
![Margaret MacMillan - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B00LXXFSBO.jpg)
War: How Conflict Shaped Us
Is peace an aberration? The bestselling author of Paris 1919 offers a provocative view of war as an essential component of humanity.
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE EAST HAMPTON STAR
"Margaret MacMillan has produced another seminal work. . . . She is right that we must, more than ever, think about war. And she has shown us how in this brilliant, elegantly written book."-H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World
The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war-organized violence-comes with organized society. War has shaped humanity's history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, and some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject not least because it brings out both the vilest and the noblest aspects of humanity.
Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control?
Drawing on lessons from wars throughout the past, from classical history to the present day, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war-the way it has determined our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves.
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND THE EAST HAMPTON STAR
"Margaret MacMillan has produced another seminal work. . . . She is right that we must, more than ever, think about war. And she has shown us how in this brilliant, elegantly written book."-H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World
The instinct to fight may be innate in human nature, but war-organized violence-comes with organized society. War has shaped humanity's history, its social and political institutions, its values and ideas. Our very language, our public spaces, our private memories, and some of our greatest cultural treasures reflect the glory and the misery of war. War is an uncomfortable and challenging subject not least because it brings out both the vilest and the noblest aspects of humanity.
Margaret MacMillan looks at the ways in which war has influenced human society and how, in turn, changes in political organization, technology, or ideologies have affected how and why we fight. War: How Conflict Shaped Us explores such much-debated and controversial questions as: When did war first start? Does human nature doom us to fight one another? Why has war been described as the most organized of all human activities? Why are warriors almost always men? Is war ever within our control?
Drawing on lessons from wars throughout the past, from classical history to the present day, MacMillan reveals the many faces of war-the way it has determined our past, our future, our views of the world, and our very conception of ourselves.
Editorial Reviews
"Clausewitz sketched On War to instruct military professionals; Margaret MacMillan has written War to explain this ‘troubling and unsettling mystery' to the rest of us. She investigates the subject's terror and fascination, as well as its scope and persistence, with honesty and humanity. Only a historian with MacMillan's comprehensive knowledge, command of sources, clarity of thought, and artful writing could succeed so brilliantly with one volume on this sweeping topic."-Robert B. Zoellick, former president of the World Bank, U.S. trade representative, and U.S. deputy secretary of state
"This important book teaches us to realize the impressive way in which war invades every aspect of our society. Read and learn."-George Shultz, former U.S. secretary of state
"War is awful but somehow alluring, dreaded but too often welcomed. On these pages, with her vast gifts as a historian and storyteller, Margaret MacMillan explains why."-Evan Thomas, journalist and historian, author of Sea of Thunder and Ike's Bluff
"Margaret MacMillan has produced another seminal work. War: How Conflict Shaped Us deepens and broadens our knowledge of war and warfare, and in doing so it deepens our understanding of humanity. No other author could have synthesized history across time without oversimplification or shown readers the subject from myriad perspectives in such a coherent manner. She is right that we must, more than ever, think about war. And she has shown us how in this brilliant, elegantly written book."-H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty
and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World
"[A] richly eclectic discussion of how culture and society have been molded by warfare throughout history . . . as colorful and tightly woven as a Persian carpet, showing us not just the many ways that men and women make war, but how war makes women and men . . . MacMillan writes with enormous ease, and practically every page of this book is interesting, even entertaining. . . . The greatest pleasures of this book are the historical anecdotes, moments and quotations that MacMillan marshals on nearly every page to illustrate her points. They are bold, arresting and various, and they make the book come alive."-Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review
"A foremost historian explores one of the central forces of human history. This readable and convincing work is yet another tour de force from Margaret MacMillan!"-Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus, author of Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump
"An insightful and ...
"This important book teaches us to realize the impressive way in which war invades every aspect of our society. Read and learn."-George Shultz, former U.S. secretary of state
"War is awful but somehow alluring, dreaded but too often welcomed. On these pages, with her vast gifts as a historian and storyteller, Margaret MacMillan explains why."-Evan Thomas, journalist and historian, author of Sea of Thunder and Ike's Bluff
"Margaret MacMillan has produced another seminal work. War: How Conflict Shaped Us deepens and broadens our knowledge of war and warfare, and in doing so it deepens our understanding of humanity. No other author could have synthesized history across time without oversimplification or shown readers the subject from myriad perspectives in such a coherent manner. She is right that we must, more than ever, think about war. And she has shown us how in this brilliant, elegantly written book."-H.R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty
and Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World
"[A] richly eclectic discussion of how culture and society have been molded by warfare throughout history . . . as colorful and tightly woven as a Persian carpet, showing us not just the many ways that men and women make war, but how war makes women and men . . . MacMillan writes with enormous ease, and practically every page of this book is interesting, even entertaining. . . . The greatest pleasures of this book are the historical anecdotes, moments and quotations that MacMillan marshals on nearly every page to illustrate her points. They are bold, arresting and various, and they make the book come alive."-Dexter Filkins, The New York Times Book Review
"A foremost historian explores one of the central forces of human history. This readable and convincing work is yet another tour de force from Margaret MacMillan!"-Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus, author of Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump
"An insightful and ...
Readers Top Reviews
I liked the price. I liked the speedy delivery and I'm looking forward to reading the book. MMH 22/10
Livfossdeputydog
This gives an account of war, some history, some anecdotes, some attitudes, and makes one think about the whole phenomenon. Clearly the author knows a tremendous amount. I was hoping for more discussion about the contradiction at the heart of war - that it brings destruction and misery and yet has been a constant throughout human history. She does touch on the various peace movements, perhaps only to point out how weak they are. But in the end I felt, as a person lucky enough never to have experienced war at first hand, no clearer about why such terrible things happen, why societies consent to war, and if there is a believable psychological theory of war.
Michael WalterVinPad
This was a dark and depressing book, but I expected that going into it. I guess what I was hoping for was more of an understanding or WHY humans wage war. Perhaps the reasons for it are too elusive to spell out, but I would have appreciated more of an attempt. I did learn some things so it wasn't a complete waste of time but I can't really recommend this book unless someone is looking for a concise history of all the wars mankind has ever waged.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
Humanity, Society and War
"War is waged by men; not by beasts, or by gods. It is a peculiarly human activity. To call it a crime against mankind is to miss at least half its significance; it is also the punishment of a crime."-Frederic Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune
If you visit the lovely Alpine town of Bolsano you will often see long queues outside the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. People wait patiently, many with their children, to see one of Bolsano's main attractions: the mummified body of a man who lived around 3300 b.c. Ötzi-the Iceman-died before the Pyramids or Stonehenge had been built yet the ice kept his body and possessions intact until he was found by two hikers in 1991. He wore a cloak made from woven grass and clothes, including leggings, boots and a cap, made from leather. His last meals, still in his stomach, were dried meat, roots, fruits and possibly bread. He was carrying wooden baskets and various tools, including an axe with a copper head, a knife, arrows and parts of a bow.
It was assumed at first that he had lost his path in a snowstorm and died alone, to be left undisturbed for the next five millennia. It was a sad story of an innocent farmer or shepherd. In the next decades, however, thanks to advances in medicine and science, it became possible to examine the body more closely, with CT scans, X-rays and biochemical testing. Ötzi had an arrowhead embedded in one shoulder and his body was bruised and cut. His head had apparently been hit too. It is most likely that he died of the wounds he received from his attacker or attackers. And it is possible that he had at some point killed others, judging by the blood found on his knife and an arrowhead.
Ötzi is by no means the only piece of evidence we have that early humans, certainly by the time of the later Stone Age, made weapons, ganged up on each other and did their best to finish each other off. Graves dating back to Ötzi's time, and earlier, have been found across the globe, from the Middle East to the Americas and the Pacific, containing piles of skeletons which bear the marks of violent death. Although weapons made of wood and skins generally do not survive, archeologists have discovered stone blades, some still buried in the skeleton.
Violence seems to have been present even earlier, during much of the greatest part of our human story in fact, when our ancestors lived nomadic lives foraging for edible plants and killing other creatures for food. Much of what is known is naturally highly speculative. Collecting and reading evidence, especially the further into the past you go-and humans appeared on earth some 350,000 years ago-is extraordinarily difficult, but we are gradually accumulating more thanks to archeological discoveries and scientific advances such as the reading of ancient DNA. Until very recently in humanity's long history, we now know, we organized ourselves into small bands scattered across the more temperate parts of the globe. There was not much in the way of material goods to fight about and presumably if a band came under threat from others it could simply move away. For much of the twentieth century, those who studied the origins of human society tended to assume that the early nomadic bands lived a peaceful existence. Yet archeologists have also discovered skeletons from this long-distant period whose injuries suggest otherwise. Anthropologists have tried to get at what that world was like by looking at the few hunter and forager societies that survived until the modern age. It is a roundabout path with potential pitfalls: outsiders who observe such societies bring their own preconceptions and contact itself brings changes.
Having said that, there are some suggestive findings. In 1803, for example, a thirteen-year-old boy, William Buckley, escaped from an English penal colony in Australia and found refuge among the Aborigines for the next three decades. He later described a world where raids, ambushes, long-running feuds and sudden and violent death were part of the fabric of society. At the other end of the world, in the harsh Arctic landscape, the first explorers and anthropologists found that the local inhabitants, Inuit and Inupiat among them, made weapons including armor from bone and ivory and had a rich oral tradition of stories of past wars. In 1964 Napoleon Chagnon, a young American anthropology student, went to do fieldwork among the Yanomami people in the Brazilian rain forest. He expected that they would confirm the then prevailing view of hunter-foragers as essentially peaceable. He found that within each village the Yanomami lived for the most part in harmony and were gentle and kind with each other, but that it was a different matter when it came to deal...
Humanity, Society and War
"War is waged by men; not by beasts, or by gods. It is a peculiarly human activity. To call it a crime against mankind is to miss at least half its significance; it is also the punishment of a crime."-Frederic Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune
If you visit the lovely Alpine town of Bolsano you will often see long queues outside the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology. People wait patiently, many with their children, to see one of Bolsano's main attractions: the mummified body of a man who lived around 3300 b.c. Ötzi-the Iceman-died before the Pyramids or Stonehenge had been built yet the ice kept his body and possessions intact until he was found by two hikers in 1991. He wore a cloak made from woven grass and clothes, including leggings, boots and a cap, made from leather. His last meals, still in his stomach, were dried meat, roots, fruits and possibly bread. He was carrying wooden baskets and various tools, including an axe with a copper head, a knife, arrows and parts of a bow.
It was assumed at first that he had lost his path in a snowstorm and died alone, to be left undisturbed for the next five millennia. It was a sad story of an innocent farmer or shepherd. In the next decades, however, thanks to advances in medicine and science, it became possible to examine the body more closely, with CT scans, X-rays and biochemical testing. Ötzi had an arrowhead embedded in one shoulder and his body was bruised and cut. His head had apparently been hit too. It is most likely that he died of the wounds he received from his attacker or attackers. And it is possible that he had at some point killed others, judging by the blood found on his knife and an arrowhead.
Ötzi is by no means the only piece of evidence we have that early humans, certainly by the time of the later Stone Age, made weapons, ganged up on each other and did their best to finish each other off. Graves dating back to Ötzi's time, and earlier, have been found across the globe, from the Middle East to the Americas and the Pacific, containing piles of skeletons which bear the marks of violent death. Although weapons made of wood and skins generally do not survive, archeologists have discovered stone blades, some still buried in the skeleton.
Violence seems to have been present even earlier, during much of the greatest part of our human story in fact, when our ancestors lived nomadic lives foraging for edible plants and killing other creatures for food. Much of what is known is naturally highly speculative. Collecting and reading evidence, especially the further into the past you go-and humans appeared on earth some 350,000 years ago-is extraordinarily difficult, but we are gradually accumulating more thanks to archeological discoveries and scientific advances such as the reading of ancient DNA. Until very recently in humanity's long history, we now know, we organized ourselves into small bands scattered across the more temperate parts of the globe. There was not much in the way of material goods to fight about and presumably if a band came under threat from others it could simply move away. For much of the twentieth century, those who studied the origins of human society tended to assume that the early nomadic bands lived a peaceful existence. Yet archeologists have also discovered skeletons from this long-distant period whose injuries suggest otherwise. Anthropologists have tried to get at what that world was like by looking at the few hunter and forager societies that survived until the modern age. It is a roundabout path with potential pitfalls: outsiders who observe such societies bring their own preconceptions and contact itself brings changes.
Having said that, there are some suggestive findings. In 1803, for example, a thirteen-year-old boy, William Buckley, escaped from an English penal colony in Australia and found refuge among the Aborigines for the next three decades. He later described a world where raids, ambushes, long-running feuds and sudden and violent death were part of the fabric of society. At the other end of the world, in the harsh Arctic landscape, the first explorers and anthropologists found that the local inhabitants, Inuit and Inupiat among them, made weapons including armor from bone and ivory and had a rich oral tradition of stories of past wars. In 1964 Napoleon Chagnon, a young American anthropology student, went to do fieldwork among the Yanomami people in the Brazilian rain forest. He expected that they would confirm the then prevailing view of hunter-foragers as essentially peaceable. He found that within each village the Yanomami lived for the most part in harmony and were gentle and kind with each other, but that it was a different matter when it came to deal...
