A History of Warfare

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1. anigbrowlSep 2026
   It was not the norm, but rather a failure mode. This isn't to say it wasn't common, but not the norm.

   A History of Warfare by John Keegan is a good introduction to military anthrolopogy, with an extensive bibliography.

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2. hilbert42Jun 2024
   You're right, The Great War and Modern Memory is not only an amazing history but it's also a remarkable bit of writing in its own right. It's one of those exceptional books on war and the history of warfare and up there with the likes of John Keegan's The Face of Battle and others that comprise the main text corpus about warfare. It's an essential read for anyone who's interested in the subject.

   It's author, Paul Fussell, an educator in English, was a WWII veteran and in that nightmarish push across the border into Germany and so had firsthand experience of what it's like to be in battle. Fussell not only looks at the horrors of The Great War but also at those who participated in it, and of the social milieu that surrounded it.

   Fussell not only speaks from experience but also from the heart, he dedicates the book to the memory of a companion who was killed nearby him. It's a very moving piece of writing.

   I came to the book just by chance, I saw it on a pile of old books on a table outside a secondhand bookstore around two decades ago. My eye was drawn immediately to the remarkable photo of a tragic figure of a young soldier on its cover. The lost and dejected look on that soldier is forever fixed in my memory.

   I doubt if that cover photograph could be bettered, it foretells the book's contents to a tee.

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3. brindlejimDec 2023
   Anyone interested in the military transformation of Europe and really Eurasia should read John Keegan's excellent "History of Warfare."

   https://www.amazon.com/History-Warfare-John-Keegan/dp/067973...

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4. anigbrowlJan 2023
   Indeed so, but by the same logic it's not the person's choice to be hypocritical while reaping the mundane rewards of apparent piety.

   Philosopher Slavoj Zižek argues that it is religion/ideology that allows for the commission of atrocities, by ascribing cosmic importance to otherwise banal conflicts over resources and prior injuries.

   In nature, predatory animals might hunt prey to extinction and then die off themselves. But this is more likely to happen in theoretical models or very isolated/extreme environments with an unusually narrow 'fault tolerance. In more complex environments, adversarial populations wax and wane chaotically, selection pressure yield evolutionary innovations and arms races that allow breakouts from local minima, and so on.

   A History of Warfare by John Keegan is a good introduction (with an excellent bibliography) to the anthropology of warfare, and has a particularly good treatment of initially adaptive social mores can end in catastrophe when they bump into resource limits or experience an external shock. Keegan emphasizes the role of technologies (both physical and social) which confer overwhelming advantages in conflict, which may or may not be sustainable. For example, pastoral herding/hunting practices developed on the large scale of the Mongolian steppe allowed nomadic hordes under leaders like Genghis Khan to overwhelm less dynamic agricultural societies. But lacking deep administrative foundations (quite literally, due to a lack of construction materials and incentives) they were unable to lock in their massive tactical advantages over a longer timescale.

   War by Azar Gat has a deeper exploration of competition between socio-cultural systems and incorporates fresher scholarship, but at the price of being somewhat more tendentious and a much less engaging read.

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5. anigbrowlSep 2022
   *A History of Warfare' by John Keegan is a readable introduction to the combined history and anthropology of warfare, with a good bibliography.
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6. hdkmrafJan 2017
   Space-Time Structure, by Erwin Schrödinger. Great read to understand complex systems, manifolds and tensors.

   And...

   A History of Warfare, by John Keegan. Great analysis of various cultures and how they have approached war across history.

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