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aehsan's review against another edition
3.0
I find myself torn when writing this review. The book is no doubt well researched and well written (Though be warned it is academic so dry) however it comes across as a collection of essays on the history and clear failure to predict the future of war. As it goes through various topics and time periods its easy to get lost in the central premise of the book and at the end it can be summed up as "No one knows anything"
spoetnik's review against another edition
2.0
Great scientific analysis of the modern history of the predictions of the wars that were to come.
adammp's review against another edition
5.0
This is the book that I wish I had read while taking international relations for my undergraduate degree. In "The Future of War," Freedman sets out to trace the predictions about the future of war made by statesmen, scholars, and intellectuals from the late-nineteenth century through the modern era to today.
Freedman covers a wide range of theorists and futurists. Giving as much reflection to prophetic value (or lack thereof) of 'invasion fiction' and science fictions writers like H. G. Wells as he does to strategists and statesmen like Herman Kahn and Henry Kissinger, Freedman's book is as comprehensive and concise a detailing of European and American thought on war as I have ever read. I have read literature reviews of individual subjects like international security and international relations before, and I've always been particularly interested in how fiction writing can be used as an analytical tool to understand conflict, but never before have I seen someone manages to give as thorough a picture and history of the interdisciplinary study of war.
In particular, I appreciate his critical attention to both the heavy theoretical realist approaches to international relations personified by Kenneth Waltz and the more modern statistically oriented approach of scholars who use data sets like those maintained by the Correlates of War (COW) project. Freedman's advocacy for a more context-based and historical approach to the study of conflict is well taken and convincing. I always felt awkwardly more comfortable the methodologies prescribed by history and anthropology when I was an undergraduate studying international relations than I did with the large data sets and sophisticated quantitative techniques of modern political science, the overly broad and reductivist nature of which always put me ill at ease. After reading "The Future of War" I feel less guilty about not having bought into the statistics craze in my major.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in approaching the subject of conflict in a more systematic way. If you are new to the field, then "The Future of War" will offer you the roadmap that I wish I had 10 years ago. If you are like me and have been reading books about international conflict for a while, then Freedman's book will help you put your thoughts in context and fill in interdisciplinary blindspots. Either way, this book is well worth the read.
Freedman covers a wide range of theorists and futurists. Giving as much reflection to prophetic value (or lack thereof) of 'invasion fiction' and science fictions writers like H. G. Wells as he does to strategists and statesmen like Herman Kahn and Henry Kissinger, Freedman's book is as comprehensive and concise a detailing of European and American thought on war as I have ever read. I have read literature reviews of individual subjects like international security and international relations before, and I've always been particularly interested in how fiction writing can be used as an analytical tool to understand conflict, but never before have I seen someone manages to give as thorough a picture and history of the interdisciplinary study of war.
In particular, I appreciate his critical attention to both the heavy theoretical realist approaches to international relations personified by Kenneth Waltz and the more modern statistically oriented approach of scholars who use data sets like those maintained by the Correlates of War (COW) project. Freedman's advocacy for a more context-based and historical approach to the study of conflict is well taken and convincing. I always felt awkwardly more comfortable the methodologies prescribed by history and anthropology when I was an undergraduate studying international relations than I did with the large data sets and sophisticated quantitative techniques of modern political science, the overly broad and reductivist nature of which always put me ill at ease. After reading "The Future of War" I feel less guilty about not having bought into the statistics craze in my major.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in approaching the subject of conflict in a more systematic way. If you are new to the field, then "The Future of War" will offer you the roadmap that I wish I had 10 years ago. If you are like me and have been reading books about international conflict for a while, then Freedman's book will help you put your thoughts in context and fill in interdisciplinary blindspots. Either way, this book is well worth the read.
tachyondecay's review
3.0
Not actually my cup of tea, The Future of War: A History is a massive data dump and analysis of what we used to think about the future of warfare. Lawrence Freedman has clearly Done the Research, and I have to hand it to him: there’s compelling stuff here. Thanks to NetGalley and Public Affairs for the eARC.
I love the premise of this book. It kind of merges my passion for literature and my mild interest in history. It is very easy for us to interpret the actions of people in the past through our hindsight and our own cultural lenses. Freedman reminds us what any good historian tries to remember: people in the past had a very different conception of the world, and as such, their motivations might be hard to unravel if they didn’t write them down. To us, the multitudinous causes of World War I and the line connecting it to World War II seem obvious. To someone living in 1920 or 1930, not so much. To us, the outcome of the Cold War and its influence around the world is just a matter of fact now—to someone living in 1950 or 1960, with the spectres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still lingering in recent memory, it’s a very different story.
Freedman’s survey of the literature is thoughtful, perceptive, detailed, and critical. He intersperses the literature between arguments for an overall thesis—which basically seems to be that, following the end of the Cold War, we’ve reached a point where it is increasingly difficult to predict the “future” of war, simply because we have yet to settle on a redefinition of the word.
One part of the book that really jumped out at me is where Freedman explains the intense efforts put into statistical analysis of wars. In particular, he describes late-twentieth-century attempts to compile casualty databases. He points out all the assumptions that necessarily went into this work, since it is difficult to define what war is, how long it lasts, or what counts as a “death” or “injury” attributable to the war. As such, while these sources of information are invaluable for discussing war and the related politics, they are also flawed and biased. Freedman reminds us that methodology in these situations is so tricky—it’s not a matter of getting it right, but of understanding that there is no one right way to collect and interpret the data.
I also really enjoyed the first part of The Future of War, where Freedman analyzes what people were writing prior to and then following the First World War. I liked the glimpse at war fiction, from people like Wells and others whose names aren’t quite as well known today. And it’s interesting how Freedman draws connections between fiction and its influence on the population, as well as politicians. Later on, he recapitulates this by recounting President Reagan’s reaction to Tom Clancy’s first novels.
The last part of the book was less interesting, for a few reasons. By this point, I was getting fatigued. This is a long book, and more to the point, it is incredibly dense and detailed and technical. A student of history will find this a useful resource; the casual reader, like myself, might start feeling bogged down. Also, the incredibly globalized nature of warfare in the 1990s, the sheer number of internecine affairs, means that Freedman has to cover a lot of ground in comparably few pages. Like, entire books have and can be written about small parts of each of these conflicts. So it all starts to feel overwhelming, but rushed.
None of this is Freedman’s fault in particular. The Future of War is quite well-written and informative. It is a little drier and less engaging than I typically want my non-fiction to be, but I can’t really hold that against it. I’m just not quite the target audience. History buffs, though, particularly those who want to learn more about how we used to think about war, might have more patience and inclination to really dive deep into this.
I love the premise of this book. It kind of merges my passion for literature and my mild interest in history. It is very easy for us to interpret the actions of people in the past through our hindsight and our own cultural lenses. Freedman reminds us what any good historian tries to remember: people in the past had a very different conception of the world, and as such, their motivations might be hard to unravel if they didn’t write them down. To us, the multitudinous causes of World War I and the line connecting it to World War II seem obvious. To someone living in 1920 or 1930, not so much. To us, the outcome of the Cold War and its influence around the world is just a matter of fact now—to someone living in 1950 or 1960, with the spectres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still lingering in recent memory, it’s a very different story.
Freedman’s survey of the literature is thoughtful, perceptive, detailed, and critical. He intersperses the literature between arguments for an overall thesis—which basically seems to be that, following the end of the Cold War, we’ve reached a point where it is increasingly difficult to predict the “future” of war, simply because we have yet to settle on a redefinition of the word.
One part of the book that really jumped out at me is where Freedman explains the intense efforts put into statistical analysis of wars. In particular, he describes late-twentieth-century attempts to compile casualty databases. He points out all the assumptions that necessarily went into this work, since it is difficult to define what war is, how long it lasts, or what counts as a “death” or “injury” attributable to the war. As such, while these sources of information are invaluable for discussing war and the related politics, they are also flawed and biased. Freedman reminds us that methodology in these situations is so tricky—it’s not a matter of getting it right, but of understanding that there is no one right way to collect and interpret the data.
I also really enjoyed the first part of The Future of War, where Freedman analyzes what people were writing prior to and then following the First World War. I liked the glimpse at war fiction, from people like Wells and others whose names aren’t quite as well known today. And it’s interesting how Freedman draws connections between fiction and its influence on the population, as well as politicians. Later on, he recapitulates this by recounting President Reagan’s reaction to Tom Clancy’s first novels.
The last part of the book was less interesting, for a few reasons. By this point, I was getting fatigued. This is a long book, and more to the point, it is incredibly dense and detailed and technical. A student of history will find this a useful resource; the casual reader, like myself, might start feeling bogged down. Also, the incredibly globalized nature of warfare in the 1990s, the sheer number of internecine affairs, means that Freedman has to cover a lot of ground in comparably few pages. Like, entire books have and can be written about small parts of each of these conflicts. So it all starts to feel overwhelming, but rushed.
None of this is Freedman’s fault in particular. The Future of War is quite well-written and informative. It is a little drier and less engaging than I typically want my non-fiction to be, but I can’t really hold that against it. I’m just not quite the target audience. History buffs, though, particularly those who want to learn more about how we used to think about war, might have more patience and inclination to really dive deep into this.
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