Beasts of War: The Story of "Us" Humans

For millennia, poets and philosophers from East to West have given voice to war's realities. Many have conceived war as a ravenous Beast. Storytellers from Aesop to those of the Indian Panchatantra have chosen animals to convey the multitude of human emotions and experiences. George Orwell's Animal Farm is just one example that comes to mind. Whether they are dogs, elephants, or lions, animals have long served the human imagination.

This study transcends conventional accounts of war, namely tales of famous battles, amazing heroes, and victorious generals. Instead, it offers a comprehensive guide to war including topics often pushed into the shadows: Art, Leadership, Monuments, Women. Celebrated epics such as the Homeric poems share the limelight with the impassioned poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon of Great War fame. Historical accounts that have shaped war stories, from the Greek historian Thucydides to modern successors like John Keegan, complement these literary creations. Other writers add flavor. J.R.R. Tolkien and Kurt Vonnegut envelope war in fantasy; David Diop blends trauma and mythology in a tale of Senegalese trench-cleaners on the First World War's Western Front. Art and cinema provide vivid descriptions, adding depth to these literary and imaginative vistas of war.

Narrative and descriptive accounts have long spoken of war but have often left it, as it were, missing in action. Recent advances in the sciences such as biopsychology and medical technology have broadened the impact of this familiar body of material. Such work sheds new light on the human condition, namely how physiological responses to violence have shaped and reshaped individuals and so societies and cultures. What emerges from this investigation is not just a fresh look at the writing of war in history, but a new paradigm that explains its long-term effects.