An Instinct for War: Scenes from the Battlefields of History [Hardcover]

Roger Spiller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 2005

Stories about war are some of the oldest stories told--used to entertain, to glorify, to lament, to educate. An Instinct for War utilizes myriad tales of war to offer a remarkable look at one of humanity's oldest plagues. Roger Spiller excavates the essence of war and its evolution through the words and thoughts of those who led--and those who were led--into battle, moving from the perspective of an ancient Chinese emperor to Napoleon's command, from a Civil War soldier's final days to the particularities of today's small wars throughout the globe.

Spiller combines a mastery of the primary sources with a vibrant historical imagination to locate a dozen turning points in the world's history of warfare that altered our understanding of war and its pursuit. We are conducted through profound moments by the voices of those who witnessed them and are given a graphic understanding of war, the devastating choices, the means by which battles are won and lost, and the enormous price exacted. Spiller's attention to the sights and sounds of battle enables us to feel the sting and menace of past violent conflicts as if they were today's.

A bold departure from standard military history, An Instinct for War will challenge our understanding of how war forever alters the landscape--both human and geographic--and how individuals can alter the nature of battle. This collective portrait of the life of war offers unparalleled insight into our struggle for mastery over a fundamental instinct.

(20051110)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a graceful feat of imagination and trenchant analysis, Spiller (general editor of the Dictionary of American Military Biography) presents 13 mostly first-person parables, meditations on moments when the "nature and conduct of war" changed significantly. His narrators, invented almost from whole cloth or reconstructed from notable figures, reflect on the craft and meaning of war in settings ranging from Han China to a future North America. In "The Testament," Greek historian and general Thucydides highlights the difficulty of learning from mishap and failure as he discusses Athens' losing struggle in the Peloponnesian War. "La Noche Trieste," narrated by a conquistadora who fought with uncommon valor under the banner of Hernando Cortez against the Aztec empire, questions the brutality of imperialism. In "The Final War," which details a post-WWII investigation of a Japanese general, Maj. Lewis Popper reflects uncomfortably on morality and the law in the context of a new kind of war. "In Winter Quarters," perhaps the best executed piece in the collection, a Swiss officer compares the strategic heritage of Napoleon to the policies of Gen. George McClellan and the "anti-strategist" Abraham Lincoln. These inventive vignettes encompass a broad sweep of history and military thought.
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Review

In a graceful feat of imagination and trenchant analysis, Spiller presents 13 mostly first-person parables, meditations on moments when the 'nature and conduct of war' changed significantly. His narrators, invented almost from whole cloth or reconstructed from notable figures, reflect on the craft and meaning of war in settings ranging from Han China to a future North America...These inventive vignettes encompass a broad sweep of history and military thought. (Publishers Weekly )

Imagine a military historian who can travel in time to past and future wars. That's what Roger Spiller, who taught at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, does in his imaginative collection of 13 short stories. They stretch from ancient China to a 21st-century war 'so terrible it was beyond naming.'...His mostly first-person stories deal with Cortez's conquest of the Aztecs, what Civil War Gen. George McClellan tried to borrow from Napoleon and an investigation of a Japanese general after World War II. Spiller's stories can be read as parables. They neither celebrate nor condemn war but raise fundamental questions faced by soldiers and civilians. (Bob Minzesheimer USA Today )

An Instinct for War is a brilliantly unorthodox piece of work. Roger Spiller, now George C. Marshall Professor, emeritus, of Military History at the U.S. Army Command General Staff College, has written a strange, brave, and absolutely fascinating book...Spiller's fictions are always in the service of ideas. They dramatize aspects of the experience of war and of strategic thought over two and a half millennia, so they are fictions in the sense that Platonic dialogues are fictions...All these stories are powerful, most of them are disturbing, and each contains lessons that can be subtle, multiple, and contradictory, as so many of war's lessons are...Along the way Spiller displays great learning, always lightly worn; great moral seriousness, never ponderously displayed; and literary flair. This is a remarkable book, initially disconcerting and eventually enthralling. (Fredric Smoler American Heritage )

Roger Spiller is the least conventional of historians. For years, he has laboured on a book on the nature of war, and he has cast it in fictional form...This thought-provoking book represents an infusion of a lifetime's reading and thought about war, and renders the dimensions of conflict comprehensible to all. This is an achievement rare among historians, and Roger Spiller must now be reckoned among the notable writers about war. (Brian Holden Reid Times Literary Supplement )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 403 pages
• Publisher: Belknap Press (October 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674019415
• ISBN-13: 978-0674019416
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,685,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very creepy but just as brilliant, December 20, 2005

By 

Stefan Isaksson "www.stefanisaksson.se" (Malmoe, Sweden) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Instinct for War: Scenes from the Battlefields of History (Hardcover)

Well, these days it's very difficult NOT to find books about war whenever you enter your favorite bookstore, especially about World War II, but also most other wars ever fought by mankind. People seem unable to get enough of books about how we manage to kill each other left and right, always have and always will, and few people doubt that as long as there are people on this planet there'll be wars, as well.

So, among all these books about war, will any of them be a real necessity? Sure. An Instinct for War definitely is.

For without a moment of doubt I feel perfectly honest when I say that Roger Spiller's book is the most fascinating book about war I've ever read. Period. Not only that, it's also the most unique book about war I've ever read; or in other words, An Instinct for War is just as different as it is worth reading. And I still mourn the fact that I've already finished it...

So what, then, makes this book so special? Well, because all stories are fiction. Or, perhaps not really fiction in the true sense of the word. Spiller's very first sentence goes as follows: "Some of this actually happened an some of it didn't, but all of it is as true as I can make it." With this, Spiller means that his stories - about different wars throughout history - all are meant to show how mankind has viewed war and warfare, its nature, shape, and conduct.

For instance, the reader will follow a surgeon in the Napoleon Wars and a soldier's last days during the Civil War, but it's the last story, The Discovery of Kansas, that is the highlight of the book. Here an eerie, yet fully believable, scenario of the future is painted, where modern warfare, which isn't about man-to-man combat in the battlefield, in all its horrors. It's a gloomy vision, much darker than what both Aldous Huxley and George Orwell ever thought up, but it's so good that this story in itself is worth every single penny you paid for the book.

Buy An Instinct for War, read the stories, and be amazed of how bizarre the human animal really is.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Somewhat Specialized, September 15, 2007

By 

R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Instinct for War: Scenes from the Battlefields of History (Paperback)

The author is an established military historian who taught at the US Army Command and Staff College. This unconventional book is an effort to capture varied aspects of wartime experience across the ages. Rather than a systematic treatise, Spiller has written a series of fictional vignettes, some based on real episodes or involving historical personages, to convey different aspects of war associated experience. The pieces vary in quality; some are very good, some merely good, all are interesting. Spiller is a good writer who draws on his extensive knowledge of military history to produce a nice variety of vignettes.

Topics include the experience of combat, the difficulties of command, cultural factors in warfare, the role of soldiers in the state, moral issues related to war, and the clash of the demands of modern technology with traditional values. Perhaps not surprising given Spiller's profession, a disproportionate number feature historians of warfare.

Since the quality of writing is good, this book is accessible to a wide audience. Its real audience, however, is people with considerable knowledge of history and military history in particular. The first vignette, for example, is drawn from the life of the great Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, not someone known to the general reading public, even those with a good general knowledge of history. The same is true for several of the other vignettes. How many people will know the influence of the 19th century theorist Jomini on our Civil War or be familiar with the Russo-Japanese War? This is not a defect of Spiller's writing or technique in general. What really makes the vignettes work is his ability to ground the issues raised in each vignette in specific, realistic historical circumstances.

Finally, its a brave man who attempts to imitate the style of Thucydides and Spiller carries this off fairly well.