A book by Margaret MacMillan can be relied upon to be thoroughly researched, well-written and, unusually for historians, to be done so with a lively sense of humour. This study of war through the ages is no exception, despite its sombre theme. Based on MacMillan’s Reith Lectures of 2018, this wider history retains the conversational freshness that made her lectures so lively and accessible.
The key question this book addresses is whether war is something bestial that we, after our ‘long peace’ since 1945, have outgrown. The answer is that such assumptions are possible only if we overlook several proxy wars around the world, some directly involving the West, such as Korea and Vietnam. MacMillan traces the roots of such conflicts as far back as Cain and Abel, dispensing early on with the myth that hunter-gatherer tribal societies, free of modern weaponry and militarism, led peaceful lives.
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