Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Amazon Prime includes:
Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.
Amazon Prime members enjoy:- Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
- Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
- Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
- A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
- Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
- Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access
Important: Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.
Buy new:
$21.00$21.00
Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com
Save with Used - Good
$12.49$12.49
Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Shakespeare Book House
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
On the Origins of War: And the Preservation of Peace Paperback – January 1, 1996
Purchase options and add-ons
War has been a fact of life for centuries. By lucidly revealing the common threads that connect the ancient confrontations between Athens and Sparta and between Rome and Carthage with the two calamitous World Wars of the twentieth century, renowned historian Donald Kagan reveals new and surprising insights into the nature of war and peace. Vivid, incisive, and accessible, Kagan's powerful narrative warns against complacency and urgently reminds us of the importance of preparedness in times of peace.
- Reading age1 year and up
- Print length624 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions5.2 x 1.3 x 8 inches
- PublisherAnchor
- Publication dateJanuary 1, 1996
- ISBN-100385423756
- ISBN-13978-0385423755
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A particularly timely masterpiece . . . brilliantly examines the origins of four major, devastating conflicts.”—Los Angeles
“Humane and penetrating . . . Kagan shows how, tragically, measures undertaken precisely to prevent war have in the past repeatedly brought it closer.”—The New Criterion
“By now it is all too clear that the so-called end of history really has meant the return of history, with a vengeance. Recent events regrettably confirm that warfare is inherent to any system of world affair yet imagined, so we better do all we can to prevent it. Professor Kagan's impressive volume presents thoughts that are timely, intellectually deep, and just about indispensable.”—George P. Schultz, Former U.S. Secretary of State
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Anchor (January 1, 1996)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 624 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0385423756
- ISBN-13 : 978-0385423755
- Reading age : 1 year and up
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.2 x 1.3 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #54,759 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonReviews with images
-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Whether it is Chamberlain's claim that he had delivered "peace in our time" in his appeasement of a madman by the name of Hitler, or Kennedy's encouragement of Soviet aggression by his incredible weakness in dealing with a Khrushchev who saw him for the phony weakling that he was, this book drives home the fact that the bad guys will win if the good guys don't stand up.
Robert Kagan obviously learned a lesson in writing "Paradise and Power" versus this book by Donald Kagan by cutting to the chase and understanding that the attention span of most Americans is the average length of a sitcom. If you want to understand why we have to keep learning history's lessons generation after generation, this is the book to buy. The peace movement is responsible for the deaths of more humans than any of the tyrants who filled the gas chambers, launched the bombs, starved the innocents, or invaded their neighbors. Kagan does a great job of showing how this has been the case since recorded history, and unfortunately we are too illiterate to understand this in an era when terrorists are identified by some euphemism like "freedom fighter" or dissident.
This book should be mandatory reading for any teenager in high school as an alternative to the politically correct nonsense that they are graded on and forced to read in schools across the country. Not to mention those who sit in their lounge chairs watching such inanities as "Friends" or equally idiotic nonsense.
This is a great book, but not a one day read if you pay close attention to the massive research and detai it encompasses. Hopefully this will be condensed into something that is more approachable by the average reader.
I read the paperback version of this book and there were a couple of printing errors (a small portion of one page was blanked out) Also I like a lot of maps and found myself following along on internet maps at times during the reading. For those of you who have attended military schools you will find the format very much like that used at the academies and war colleges.
The book is well worth the time to read (as are Dr Kagan's works on the Peloponnesian War).
The book is generally very good and I learned a lot from reading it.
The book first juxtaposes the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens to the more recent conflict of World War 1 comparing Britain and Germany. This is not a linear comparison where one nation is like a corresponding one from the other conflict, but instead how aspects of the conflict make the modern nations comparable to one of the nations in certain aspects and to the other in other aspects.
The book then juxtaposes the Second Punic War to the Second World War. Here the comparison is a little more linear, but still not a straight forward one modern nation is analogous to one ancient nation.
The book then discusses the Cuban missile crisis and uses ideas discussed from the other sections of the book to explain why the events took the course they did.
Overall a good book.
However there are two faults:
1. The sections become way out of balance when the ancient wars get kind of a quick over view and then the text becomes bogged down in the fine details of the modern war. A little more info on the ancient and a little more discussion comparing the ancient and modern conflicts would have helped.
2. The book feels a little incomplete from its over all ending conclusion. You can definitely draw conclusions from it, I just wish the author discussed his philosophical views and reasons for them a little bit more.
Top reviews from other countries
The world wars are dealt with in a lot of detail. In comparison, the second Punic war and the war between Sparta and Athens feels far sparser on details and light on analysis. I appreciate there is more fodder to chew on for the more modern wars, but to try and use the older wars for reference points when their page counts are so starkly lacking compared to the 21st century wars is not very inspiring.
However, the Cuban Crisis has plenty of interesting snippets and research I had no idea of. Interesting to see Kennedy portrayed in such a way to be very reminiscent of Chamberlain.









