War: How Conflict Shaped Us, by Margaret MacMillan, takes a novel approach to the study of war, framing it not as an anomaly of human behavior, both on the micro and macro level, but part and parcel of the human experience. War has molded us and our societies, and has a particularly strong outcome on the rise of technologies. In the end MacMillan cannot (and no one can) say if the benefits war brings outweigh the costs. But that hardly matters, as we still engage in war, and do not seem likely to stop anytime soon.
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