War And Our World

Keegan, John. War and Our World: The Reith Lectures 1998. London, Pimlico, 1999. 13.5 cm x 21.5 cm. XV, 87 pages. Original softcover. Excellent condition with only very minor signs of external wear. Clean inside with solid binding. Includes the following chapters: War and Our World / The Origins of War / War and the State / War and the Individual / Can There Be an End to War? Majestic...War, he argues, has been the curse of our civilization and our century. Never has war been so destructive as in the late industrial era, and he backs his claim with a superb sweep of history since the beginning of organized warfare, armies and fortification, to the present age of the nuclear bomb, smart weapons, the urban guerrilla and the terrorist. (Times Literary Supplement) No short book can encompass the whole history of war. John Keegan therefore concentrates on significant themes: the impact of war on our century and the forms it has taken, from the total war of large industrialised states to the low-intensity but nevertheless deadly assaults on the established order by ethnic and religious fundamentalists and ideological terrorists; the origin of war in human nature and history; the adoption and use of war by states as an instrument of policy; the experience of war by individuals and human groups and its effect on their existence; and, finally, the future of war, particularly the question of whether there can now be an end to it. (Publisher)