Product 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #532533 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-15
• Released on: 2001-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780375705205
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From 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. (June 1)Forecast: Michael Howard's equally succinct The Invention of Peace (Forecasts, Feb. 26) deals with a similar subject, but Keegan'sthanks to his reputation, in particular, the huge success of The First World War (Vintage, 2000), which sold more than 222,000 copies to become a New York Times bestsellerwill outsell it by far.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Popular military historian Keegan presents his 1998 Reith lectures for the BBC in a book that should only enlarge his readership. The twentieth century's wars seem to have affected every person on the planet because, until the current trend toward smaller, volunteer militaries, building huge armies by massive conscription meant that every man was potentially a soldier. Further, it seems that everyone has questioned whether war is intrinsic to human nature and whether it can be brought to an end. Keegan responds to those issues from a perspective steeped in world military history. He declares that it can't be decided whether war is a product of genetically ingrained human aggressiveness or is socially constructed. He is optimistic, however, that the waging of war will become more codified and that certain practices and weapons will be outlawed. Still, he gives peaceniks a cold bath, for he regards the project to eliminate war through progressive legal constriction as delusion. An astute discussion, mixing idealism and realism about its subject. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
?Majestic.... A superb sweep of history.??The Times Literary Supplement

?The most readable and the most original of living military historians.??The New York Times Book Review -- Review

Customer Reviews

A Short but Engaging Book
The modern master of military history, Keegan's lectures compiled into several short but engaging essays form a book that proves both a quick and interesting read. Keegan's general purpose is to formulate a view on what the role of war in human society is, or at least what it has developed into being. Through the short pages of the book, it becomes quite clear that there has indeed been a wealth of change in this role over the centuries, and understanding that progression is important for gaining an understanding of man.
Meeting that goal is something Keegan does well, though I think the book could have benefitted if he had been able to go even deeper into the points he makes just to increase the almost overly brief nature of the book. But even with what is there, despite its brevity, a valuable assesment of man from not only a historical viewpoint, but also an psychological, anthropological and sociological viewpoint is ascertained by Keegan, and it is this multi-disciplinary approach to war and man that give the work its substance.
For anyone seeking a truly in depth look at the changing role and place of war in society, I would suggest another of Keegan's works with more academic magnitude, "A History of Warfare" which inquires upon many of the same points. But, for anyone looking for a brief analysis of warfare and the world we live in, I assure you that this title will not leave you disappointed. Another winner for Keegan.

War and Our World
1 - War and Our World
2 - The Origins of War
3 - War and the State
4 - War and the Individual
5 - Can There Be an End to War?

This book is a transcript from a series of five lectures given by esteemed military historian, John Keegan. It is a short, but highly informative book; I read it in less than an hour.

The first four chapters are brilliant historical analysis. His insight into the toll and origins of war are invaluable. He explains well how war relates to the modern nation-state and individual, observing the increasing incidence of war-making by non-state actors.

However, when he diverges from history to try to answer the question of can we end war, he is less than prescient. I have a couple problems with the final chapter.

First, he seems eager to subjugate national sovereignty to the UN by asserting that war is now illegal, except in cases of self-defense or UN approval. That may be the case in Europe, but here in America, our constitution is still the supreme law of the land. It grants the office of commander-in-chief to the president and power to raise armies and declare war to the congress. Until the constitution is amended to read differently, the US reserves the sole right to determine the legality of our wars.

Second, his British sense of honour [sic] can be carried too far. He suggests subversion, sabotage, and assassination are less than honorable in warfare. Our special operations forces must use such tactics against assymetrical threats such as Al Qaeda terrorists.

Ultimately, I agree with the thesis of the chapter though: we must always retain the will and means to confront war and violence on equal, if not overwhelming, terms.

Very disappointing - a Tory's thoughts on war
Early in the book, Keegan proclaims confidently that "the worst of war is now behind us." We had `the end of history', now we have the end of war, in this decade of wars in Iraq, Sudan, Congo, Angola, Rwanda, the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia .... Mind you, he also writes that the threat of disease has ended, when worldwide every day 33,000 children die from curable diseases, and that the threat of famine has ended, when 200 million children are undernourished. Should we call for an end to endism?

He says blithely that no more states will acquire nuclear weapons, but no sooner had he finished these lectures than the Indian and Pakistani Governments tested theirs. When writing about the arms trade, he does not mention the big three, USA, Britain and France (and who else could have sold India and Pakistan the components for their nuclear weapons?).

He writes that lethal weapons could soon be banned. But in the war against Iraq, US and British forces fired tens of thousands of depleted uranium shells, illegal under UN Resolution 32/84, which bans the use of `radioactive material weapons' and US forces also used chemical weapons. They are not about to destroy these weapons.

Keegan supports British forces' participation in yet more UN and NATO wars to end war. But a greater military historian, Correlli Barnett, argued in `The Lost Victory' that successive British Governments, from Attlee to Blair, damaged Britain's interests by acting this global military role.

Keegan's complacent judgements flow from his peculiar notion that "states, particularly those of Western Europe and North America, have been transforming themselves from belligerent to benevolent entities." In fact, since 1945 NATO powers have intervened in 243 conflicts, yet he writes that "poor states mainly cause war."

Keegan is a distinguished military historian, with great narrative skills, as shown especially in the excellent `Six Armies in Normandy'. But these lectures show that he is not a profound thinker about war.