
Why War?
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Narrated by:
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Dennis Kleinman
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By:
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Richard Overy
About this listen
Why has war been such a consistent presence throughout the human past? A leading historian explains, drawing on rich examples and keen insight.
Richard Overy is not the first scholar to take up the title question. In 1931, at the request of the League of Nations, Albert Einstein asked Sigmund Freud to collaborate on a short work examining whether there was "a way of delivering mankind from the menace of war." Published the next year as a pamphlet entitled Why War?, it conveyed Freud's conclusion that the "death drive" made any deliverance impossible—the psychological impulse to destruction was universal in the animal kingdom. The global wars of the later 1930s and 1940s seemed ample evidence of the dismal conclusion.
A preeminent historian of those wars, Overy brings vast knowledge to the title question and years of experience unraveling the knotted motivations of war. His approach is to separate the major drivers and motivations, and consider the ways each has contributed to organized conflict. They range from the impulses embedded in human biology and psychology, to the incentives to conflict developed through cultural evolution, to competition for resources. The discussions show remarkable range, delving deep into the Neolithic past, through the twentieth-century world wars, and up to the current conflict in Ukraine.
©2024 Richard Overy (P)2024 KaloramaListeners also enjoyed...
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By: Roger Crowley
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The Human Tide
- How Population Shaped the Modern World
- By: Paul Morland
- Narrated by: Zeb Soanes
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The rise and fall of the British Empire; the emergence of America as a superpower; the ebb and flow of global challenges from Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Soviet Russia. These are the headlines of history, but they cannot be properly grasped without understanding the role that population has played. The Human Tide shows how periods of rapid population transition - a phenomenon that first emerged in the British Isles but gradually spread across the globe - shaped the course of world history.
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dry
- By Ralph C. on 05-02-19
By: Paul Morland
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Active Measures
- The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare
- By: Thomas Rid
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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We live in the age of disinformation - of organized deception. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the very foundation of liberal democracy: trust in facts. Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm, even before the 2016 election. But this is not new. The story of modern disinformation begins with the clash between communism and capitalism after the Russian Revolution.
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Grounding book for COVID 19 Media
- By fjness on 05-12-20
By: Thomas Rid
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Pax
- War and Peace in Rome's Golden Age
- By: Tom Holland
- Narrated by: Tom Holland
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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The Pax Romana has long been shorthand for the empire’s golden age. Stretching from Caledonia to Arabia, Rome ruled over a quarter of the world’s population. It was the wealthiest and most formidable state in the history of humankind. Pax is a captivating narrative history of Rome at the height of its power. From the gilded capital to realms beyond the frontier, historian Tom Holland shows ancient Rome in all its glory
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Great book!
- By Mic on 09-27-23
By: Tom Holland
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The Patriarchs
- The Origins of Inequality
- By: Angela Saini
- Narrated by: Sohm Kapila
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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For fans of Sapiens and The Dawn of Everything, a groundbreaking exploration of gendered oppression—its origins, its histories, our attempts to understand it, and our efforts to combat it.
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Patriarchys over time and space
- By Lynda Dickson on 12-22-23
By: Angela Saini
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Descent into Darkness
- Pearl Harbor, 1941, A Navy Diver's Memoir
- By: Edward C. Raymer
- Narrated by: Peter Johnson
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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On December 7, 1941, as the great battleships Arizona, Oklahoma, and Utah lie paralyzed and burning in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A crack team of U.S. Navy salvage divers headed by Edward C. Raymer are hurriedly flown to Oahu from the mainland. Their two-part orders are direct and straightforward: (1) rescue as many trapped sailors and Marines as possible, and (2) resurrect what remains of America's once mighty pacific fleet. Descent Into Darkness tells their story.
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A Massive Disappointment
- By Matthew on 10-14-15
By: Edward C. Raymer
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Resistance
- The Underground War Against Hitler, 1939-1945
- By: Halik Kochanski
- Narrated by: Jennifer M. Dixon
- Length: 46 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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It's almost shocking to think that now, more than seventy years after the Nazi surrender in 1945, there is not a single volume that has attempted to unify the resistance movements that convulsed Europe during the brutal years of occupation. In her extraordinary work, Resistance, Halik Kochanski does just that, creating a prodigiously researched account that becomes the first to bring these disparate histories into a single narrative.
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Uneven in quality of depiction of various areas
- By K. T. Jukic on 05-17-23
By: Halik Kochanski
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Index, a History of The
- A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age
- By: Dennis Duncan
- Narrated by: Neil Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Most of us give little thought to the back of the book - it's just where you go to look things up. But as Dennis Duncan reveals in this delightful and witty history, hiding in plain sight is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. In the pages of the index, we might find "Butchers, to be avoided", or "Cows that shite Fire", or even catch "Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne". Here, for the first time, is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past.
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Maybe a book that should be read rather than listened to
- By Amazon Customer on 11-09-22
By: Dennis Duncan
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Borgata: Rise of Empire: A History of the American Mafia
- Borgata Trilogy, Book 1
- By: Louis Ferrante
- Narrated by: Louis Ferrante
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In this first volume, Ferrante traces the mafia's phenomenal "rise of empire" through larger-than-life characters and legendary mobsters as they provide alcohol to the American public during Prohibition, penetrate industrial labor unions, practically take over the island of Cuba and, with extraordinary vision, create the gambling mecca of Las Vegas.
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Ferrante hits the trifecta
- By Richard P Paczynski on 04-12-25
By: Louis Ferrante
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Riding with Cochise
- The Apache Story of America's Longest War
- By: Steve Price
- Narrated by: Kaipo Schwab
- Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Riding with Cochise brings the violent drama of the American Southwest to life through the eyes of the legendary Apache chieftain Cochise and three other tribal leaders. Relying largely on the oral histories told by relatives of these great warriors as well as personal diaries of others who were involved, veteran author Steve Price takes listeners deep into the Cochise Stronghold, through Massacre Canyon, and across Apache Pass.
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A lack of information about Cochise.
- By Tlenaai Wahya on 06-01-24
By: Steve Price
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Nam-Sense: Surviving Vietnam with the 101st Airborne
- By: Arthur Wiknik Jr.
- Narrated by: Todd McLaren
- Length: 11 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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An honest tour of the Vietnam War from the soldier's eye view... Nam-Sense is the brilliantly written story of a combat squad leader in the 101st Airborne Division. Arthur Wiknik was a 19-year-old kid from New England when he was drafted into the US Army in 1968. After completing various NCO training programs, he was promoted to sergeant "without ever setting foot in a combat zone" and sent to Vietnam in early 1969. Shortly after his arrival on the far side of the world, Wiknik was assigned to Camp Evans, a mixed-unit base camp near the Northern village of Phong Dien.
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A very good view of the war from a grunt's view.
- By Frank B. Smith on 07-16-19
What listeners say about Why War?
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-23-25
War is Peace
We can not escape the paradox of war and peace and thus must remain slaves to an inescapable fate.
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- Tyler
- 10-20-24
Encyclopedic style, lots of analysis
Engrossing by teaching. Not a novel but willing to keep throwing lots of examples from history at you to elaborate on each chapter’s purpose. And this was done with care for the readers time and was certainly well thought thru. Each chapter is an aspect of why war is enmeshed in who we are(as species, individuals, groups, etc).
If u want to jump from fascinating anecdotes to sweeping historical insights then this is the book for u.
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