Customer Reviews

Ride of the Second Horseman: The Birth and Death of War

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This book greatly impressed me with its synthesis of recent evolutionary theory, anthropology, and history. It goes far beyond earlier histories of the genesis of war, presenting a cogent overall hypothesis: that a culture's means of obtaining food determined the character of it conception warfare. He shows how China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Mexico, and Peru all developed different notions of warfare that arose directly from their agricultural economies. This book has much in common with Jared Diamond's magnificent Guns, Germs, and Steel. I wish that it enjoyed more of the latter's commercial success.

There are already some good reviews, so I will only suggest reading the following books on war in addition to O'Connell's: a) "War in human civilization" by Azar Gat; b) "War before Civilization. The Myth of the Peaceful Savage", by Lawrence Keeley; c) "How War Began" by Keith F. Otterbein; d) "War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires" by Peter Turchin; and e) "War and the Law of Nations: A General History" by Stephen Neff.

The philosophies of Hobbes and Rousseau consider the questions: Is war innate to humans or is war innate to civilization? Robert L. O'Connell answers "no" to both. Instead, O'Connell contends that humans were without war for most of their existence, and have only found it and maintained it because of its utility for the maintence of society. Once war no longer serves its purpose, then it is no longer necessary. At the time of this publication, O'Connell contended that this was coming true. This book explores how and why war arose, and argues that there is hope for its extinction.

This is another prime example of why academic books don't sell! The style is the most obtuse I've encountered and completely fails on clarity. Many of his suppositions are highly speculative and he makes far too many leaps of faith.