Why War?

De: Richard Overy

Narrado por: Dennis Kleinman

Why has war been such a consistent presence throughout the human past? A leading historian explains, drawing on rich examples and keen insight.

Richard Overy is not the first scholar to take up the title question. In 1931, at the request of the League of Nations, Albert Einstein asked Sigmund Freud to collaborate on a short work examining whether there was "a way of delivering mankind from the menace of war." Published the next year as a pamphlet entitled Why War?, it conveyed Freud's conclusion that the "death drive" made any deliverance impossible—the psychological impulse to destruction was universal in the animal kingdom. The global wars of the later 1930s and 1940s seemed ample evidence of the dismal conclusion.

A preeminent historian of those wars, Overy brings vast knowledge to the title question and years of experience unraveling the knotted motivations of war. His approach is to separate the major drivers and motivations, and consider the ways each has contributed to organized conflict. They range from the impulses embedded in human biology and psychology, to the incentives to conflict developed through cultural evolution, to competition for resources. The discussions show remarkable range, delving deep into the Neolithic past, through the twentieth-century world wars, and up to the current conflict in Ukraine.

©2024 Richard Overy (P)2024 Kalorama

War is Peace

We can not escape the paradox of war and peace and thus must remain slaves to an inescapable fate.

Encyclopedic style, lots of analysis

Engrossing by teaching. Not a novel but willing to keep throwing lots of examples from history at you to elaborate on each chapter’s purpose. And this was done with care for the readers time and was certainly well thought thru. Each chapter is an aspect of why war is enmeshed in who we are(as species, individuals, groups, etc).
If u want to jump from fascinating anecdotes to sweeping historical insights then this is the book for u.