War

MacMillan opens with an intriguing premise - that war needs to be understood through the lens of how it has shaped societies, societal change, and culture to appreciate why our world looks like it does today and how to avoid future conflict while achieving some of its goals. However the book itself doesn't attempt to unpack this issue, and is instead mostly a themed review of similarities between aspects of warfare through the centuries. This organization creates a bit of whiplash, mostly because it's not chronologically ordered to analyze how these relationships evolved. Ultimately one comes away with some interesting historical examples of different phenomena but not necessarily a deeper understanding of war's effects.

This was a really good book in terms of how it was written, and the stories it shares. If you’re looking for a casual expose into war, this is a good book for you. As a scholarly book however, this book falls extremely short.

This is a sweeping but superficial and often hackneyed survey of various aspects of war. The best parts are the occasional points of history or quotations that I didn't know or had forgotten.