While modern science ponders whether human beings are programmed toward belligerence and warfare, there is no doubt that war has been humanity's constant companion since the dawn of civilization and that we have become all too proficient in its conduct. In War, noted military historian and award-winning journalist Gwynne Dyer ranges from the tumbling walls of Jericho to the modern advent of total war. He shows how the martial instinct has evolved over the human generations and among our close primate relations. Dyer confronts the reality of war, and the threat of nuclear weapons, but does not despair that war is our eternal legacy. He likes and respects soldiers, even while he knows their job is to kill; he understands the physics and the psychology of battles, but is no war junkie. Dyer surveys the fiery battlefields of human history, never losing sight of the people caught up in war. He actually believes there is hope that war, like slavery, can be abolished. This brilliant book explores the human past to imagine a different future. Abundantly illustrated, with sources from Egyptian pyramid paintings to searing photos from today's news magazines, War is a telling account of mankind's most destructive tradition.
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Review:
Dyer bolsters his extensive knowledge with a rhetorical style that is at once invisible and entirely convincing. War [is] at once a valuable historical treatise and a fervent and compelling call toward pacifism. --Publishers' Weekly
Dr. Gwynne Dyer is one of Canada s best known defense and foreign policy analysts. --National Post
His book is no simple narrative but a web of connections. The text ranges over the terrain of history, sparkling with insight and digressions... As an interpretive history of war, War is brilliant. --The Seattle Times
About the Author:
GWYNNE DYER served in the Canadian, British, and American navies. He earned a Ph.D. in military history from the University of London, and was a senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. The original version of this book, published in 1985, won a Columbia University School of Journalism Award. A seven-part television series based upon War was broadcast in forty-five countries in the mid-1980s; one of the episodes was nominated for an Academy Award. Dyer writes a twice-weekly newspaper column on international affairs and security policy that is published by 175 newspapers worldwide, many in the U. S. He lives in London with his wife and children.
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