War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots

Big thinker Morris (Why the West Rules—for Now) returns with an ambitious, epoch-spanning study of violence writ large across time and place. The author posits the counterintuitive and controversial view that war has made the world safer and richer over the long run. As humanity evolved biologically and culturally, he argues, it learned that imperious Leviathans were necessary to cage the violent beast within; these ruling powers “in turn created bigger societies, pacified them internally, and allowed economies to grow.” Dominant polities then became superpowers or “globocops that keep the peace by raising the costs of breaching it to prohibitive levels.” By surveying germane, timely issues from containment to ICBMs and “doomsday devices,” as well as speculating on the potentials of the transhuman and posthuman, Morris casts a wide net. But in oscillating between doom-and-gloom predictions and sunnier scenarios, he leaves little room for nuanced eventualities. His overconfidence in computerization and technology as the ultimate means of obviating the need for waging megawar elides the human variable in his calculus. Still, this is a fascinating and stimulating work sure to compel readers of anthropology, archaeology, history, and futurity. Illus. Agent: Sandra Dijkstra, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Apr.)