Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization, Oxford University Press, 2006

Azar Gat, War in Human Civilization, Oxford University Press, 2006

ISBN-13: 978-0199262137

The book is long (800+ pages) and contains a lot of extremely interesting material, primarily about ancient warfare. I would recommend it as a useful substitute to J. Keegan book (John Keegan, “A History of Warfare”), which in a fashion, typical of English social sciences, mixes brilliant writing with superficial scholarship as predictably as English lunches wash down awful food with excellent tea.

In particular, he puts forward an amazing idea that war as a human institution may be at its historic end. In the technological society where competition for resources becomes obsolete, it does not serve any useful function, remaining simply a blood sport for channeling innate male aggression. This idea appeals to me very much and I plan to elaborate on it more in the future.

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