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A review by jimcaserta
War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret MacMillan
2.0
We have just withdrawn from a 20 year war that has occupied ¾ of my adult life, and how that war has shaped America and the world was barely mentioned in War: How Conflict Shaped Us. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars, along with the 9/11 attack has been hugely influential in the past 20 years in America. The aftershocks of the Iraq invasion have rattled the middle east leading to dictators such as Qadaffi being overthrown and the horrendous civil war in Syria. How has the Iraq war shaped America, our allied fighters & the middle East? That’s a question I’d love to hear the answer to, but it was not in this book.
Perhaps the clearest throughline of how one war shapes countries, and leading to further war is Europe during WWI & WWII. Hemingway and the lost generation were not mentioned at all in this book. How WWI and the Treaty of Versailles shaped interwar Europe is a topic that deserved more attention. Beyond Europe, WWI resulted in a complete redrawing of borders in the middle east that has repercussions still today.
Other problems I had with the book was a seemingly ‘both sides are at fault’ attitude towards war and a focus on Western nations. The American Civil war was mentioned a lot, but slavery might not have been mentioned at all (I forgot to search for the term). The causes and aftermath of that war, as well as a discussion of morals surrounding them were absent. The mongol invasions had, and could argue still have, considerable impact on two of today’s largest nations: Russia and China. I don’t remember if those invasions shaping those nations attitudes towards external risks was in the book.
This book contains a lot of research, but leans too heavily on works like Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of our Nature. Pinker is not a historian, and MacMillan would have been better suited to go through to his references instead of relying on his interpretation. I like the idea of a book that explains how war has shaped the nations of today, but this book did not answer that question for me.
Perhaps the clearest throughline of how one war shapes countries, and leading to further war is Europe during WWI & WWII. Hemingway and the lost generation were not mentioned at all in this book. How WWI and the Treaty of Versailles shaped interwar Europe is a topic that deserved more attention. Beyond Europe, WWI resulted in a complete redrawing of borders in the middle east that has repercussions still today.
Other problems I had with the book was a seemingly ‘both sides are at fault’ attitude towards war and a focus on Western nations. The American Civil war was mentioned a lot, but slavery might not have been mentioned at all (I forgot to search for the term). The causes and aftermath of that war, as well as a discussion of morals surrounding them were absent. The mongol invasions had, and could argue still have, considerable impact on two of today’s largest nations: Russia and China. I don’t remember if those invasions shaping those nations attitudes towards external risks was in the book.
This book contains a lot of research, but leans too heavily on works like Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of our Nature. Pinker is not a historian, and MacMillan would have been better suited to go through to his references instead of relying on his interpretation. I like the idea of a book that explains how war has shaped the nations of today, but this book did not answer that question for me.