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Saved: A war reporter's mission to make it home
Par Benjamin Hall. 2023
"An affecting, singular story...a bracing tale of life on the edge of death." —Kirkus Reviews When veteran war reporter Benjamin…
Hall woke up in Kyiv on the morning of March 14, 2022, he had no idea that, within hours, Russian bombs would nearly end his life. As a journalist for Fox News, Hall had worked in dangerous war zones like Syria and Afghanistan, but with three young daughters at home, life on the edge was supposed to be a thing of the past. Yet when Russia viciously attacked Ukraine in February 2022, Hall quickly volunteered to go. A few weeks later, while on assignment, Hall and his crew were blown up in a Russian strike. With Hall himself gravely injured and stuck in Kyiv, it was unclear if he would make it out alive. This is the story of how he survived—a story that continues to this day. For the first time, Hall shares his experience in full—from his ground-level view of the war to his dramatic rescue to his arduous, and ongoing, recovery. Going inside the events that have permanently transformed him, Hall recalls his time at the front lines of our world's conflicts, exploring how his struggle to step away from war reporting led him back one perilous last time. Featuring nail-biting accounts from the many people across multiple countries who banded together to get him to safety, Hall offers a stunning look at complex teamwork and heartfelt perseverance that turned his life into a mission. Through it all, Hall's spirit has remained undaunted, buoyed by that remarkable corps of people from around the world whose collective determination ensured his survival. Evocative, harrowing, and deeply moving, Saved is a powerful memoir of family and friends, of life and healing, and of how to respond when you are tested in ways you never thought possibleOutspoken: My Fight for Freedom and Human Rights in Afghanistan
Par Sima Samar. 2024
The impassioned memoir of Afghanistan's Sima Samar: medical doctor, public official, founder of schools and hospitals, thorn in the side…
of the Taliban, nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, and lifelong advocate for girls and women."I have three strikes against me. I’m a woman, I speak out for women, and I’m Hazara, the most persecuted ethnic group in Afghanistan."Dr. Sima Samar has been fighting for equality and justice for most of her life. Born into a polygamous family, she learned early that girls had inferior status, and she had to agree to an arranged marriage if she wanted to go to university. By the time she was in medical school, she had a son, Ali, and had become a revolutionary. After her husband was disappeared by the pro-Russian regime, she escaped. With her son and medical degree, she took off into the rural areas—by horseback, by donkey, even on foot—to treat people who had never had medical help before.Sima Samar's wide-ranging experiences both in her home country and on the world stage have given her inside access to the dishonesty, the collusion, the corruption, the self-serving leaders, and the hijacking of religion. And as a former Vice President, she knows all the players in this chess game called Afghanistan. With stories that are at times poignant, at times terrifying, inspiring as well as disheartening, Sima provides an unparalleled view of Afghanistan’s past and its present. Despite being in grave personal danger for many years, she has worked tirelessly for the dream she is convinced is an achievable one: justice and full human rights for all the citizens of her country.The Peace: A Warrior's Journey
Par Romeo Dallaire. 2024
International humanitarian icon and bestselling author General Roméo Dallaire guides readers on a crucial and inspiring journey from past wars…
through post-modern conflict toward a vision of lasting peace.In The Peace, Roméo Dallaire shows us the past, present and future of war through the prism of his own life. Trained in classic warfare during the Cold War era of mutual deterrence, Dallaire in good faith commanded the UN’s peacekeeping mission for Rwanda in 1994, only to see the country abandoned and descend into the hell of genocide. The battered, tortured warrior who emerged from that catastrophe grew determined to help repair the new world disorder—to prevent genocide, abolish the use of child soldiers, and find ways to intervene in, even prevent, conflicts in defence of humanity. And so Dallaire helped advance the doctrines of Responsibility to Protect and the Will to Intervene only to witness those initiatives falter because of the same old power politics, national self-interest and general indifference that had allowed the genocide in Rwanda to unfold unchecked. In his final act, Dallaire has become a warrior working towards a better future in which those old paradigms are rejected and replaced. In The Peace he calls out the elements that undermine true security because they reinforce the dangerous, self-interested belief that "balance" of power and truces are the best we can do. Too often we say we are "at peace" because the bombs are falling elsewhere and we, ourselves, are not under attack. Dallaire shows us a path, instead, to what he calls "the peace," a state where, above all else, humanity values the ties that bind us and the planet together—and acts accordingly. This book is the cri de coeur of a warrior who has been to hell and back and hopes to help guide us to a better place.An army afire: How the us army confronted its racial crisis in the vietnam era
Par Beth Bailey. 2023
By the late 1960s, what had been widely heralded as the best qualified, best-trained army in United States history was…
descending into crisis as the Vietnam War raged without end. Morale was tanking. AWOL rates were rising. And in August 1968, a group of Black soldiers seized control of the infamous Long Binh Jail, burned buildings, and beat a white inmate to death with a shovel. The days of "same mud, same blood" were over, and a new generation of Black GIs had decisively rejected the slights and institutional racism their forefathers had endured. As Black and white soldiers fought in barracks and bars, with violence spilling into surrounding towns within the United States and in West Germany, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan, army leaders grew convinced that the growing racial crisis undermined the army's ability to defend the nation. Acclaimed military historian Beth Bailey shows how the United States Army tried to solve that racial crisis (in army terms, "the problem of race"). Army leaders were surprisingly creative in confronting demands for racial justice, even willing to challenge fundamental army principles of discipline, order, hierarchy, and authority. Bailey traces a frustrating yet fascinating story, as a massive, conservative institution came to terms with demands for changeCountdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons
Par Sarah Scoles. 2024
For fans of Oppenheimer, a riveting investigation into the modern nuclear weapons landscape. Nuclear weapons are, today, as important…
as they were during the Cold War, and some experts say we could be as close to a nuclear catastrophe now as we were at the height of that conflict. Despite that, conversations about these bombs generally often happen in past tense. In Countdown, science journalist Sarah Scoles uncovers a different atomic reality: the nuclear age&’s present. Drawing from years of on-the-ground reporting at the nation's nuclear weapons labs, Scoles interrogates the idea that having nuclear weapons keeps us safe, deterring attacks and preventing radioactive warfare. She deftly assesses the existing nuclear apparatus in the United States, taking readers beyond the news headlines and policy-speak to reveal the state of nuclear-weapons technology, as well as how people currently working within the U.S. nuclear weapons complex have come to think about these bombs and the idea that someone, someday, might use them. Through a sharp, surprising, and undoubtedly urgent narrative, Scoles brings us out of the Cold War and into the twenty-first century, opening readers' eyes to the true nature of nuclear weapons and their caretakers while also giving us the context necessary to understand the consequences of their existence, for worse and for better, for now and for the future.This book offers the first comprehensive study of defence offsets and its economic, security, political and theoretical implications.Originating in the…
second half of the 19th century, defence offsets - additional economic, industrial and technological benefits to states for buying foreign weapons - have since been a key feature of the global arms trade and defence industry. And yet, offsets are an under-researched and under-theorised phenomenon. This book fills this gap in the literature by offering the first general theory of defence offsets, as well as the first systematic analysis of the offset phenomenon. By building on the insights of scholars of defence economics and drawing from the International Relations liberal paradigm, as well as reviving and adapting Robert Putnam’s two-level game framework, the book proposes a liberal-rationalist theory of defence offsets. It then proves the worth of such a theory through Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) of fifty-four fighter aircraft transfers from 1992 to 2021 inclusive, and three in-depth case studies addressing offsets negotiated and agreed to as part of fighter aircraft competitions in Brazil, India, and South Korea.This book will be of interest to students of defence studies, defence economics, security studies and international relations.The Avro Arrow: For the Record
Par Palmiro Campagna. 2003
“No one has done more than Palmiro Campagna to document the story of Canada’s extraordinary Avro Arrow ... This latest…
work sheds new light on the Arrow’s fascinating saga.” — ANDREW CHAIKIN, author of A Man on the MoonAn expanded edition of the bestselling book, including newly discovered American records that shed further light on the disastrous cancellation of the Avro Arrow. The controversial cancellation of the Avro Arrow — an extraordinary achievement of Canadian military aviation — continues to inspire debate today. When the program was scrapped in 1959, all completed aircraft and those awaiting assembly were destroyed, along with tooling and technical information. Was abandoning the program the right decision? Did Canada lose more than it gained?Brimming with information to fill the gaps in the Arrow’s troubled history, this new edition also brings to light recently discovered documents that answer whether the United States government wished Canada to continue the development of what was considered the world’s most advanced interceptor aircraft.How two charismatic, exceptionally talented physicists came to terms with the nuclear weapons they helped to createIn 1945, the United…
States dropped the bomb, and physicists were forced to contemplate disquieting questions about their roles and responsibilities. When the Cold War followed, they were confronted with political demands for their loyalty and McCarthyism's threats to academic freedom. By examining how J. Robert Oppenheimer and Hans A. Bethe—two men with similar backgrounds but divergent aspirations and characters—struggled with these moral dilemmas, one of our foremost historians of physics tells the story of modern physics, the development of atomic weapons, and the Cold War.Oppenheimer and Bethe led parallel lives. Both received liberal educations that emphasized moral as well as intellectual growth. Both were outstanding theoreticians who worked on the atom bomb at Los Alamos. Both advised the government on nuclear issues, and both resisted the development of the hydrogen bomb. Both were, in their youth, sympathetic to liberal causes, and both were later called to defend the United States against Soviet communism and colleagues against anti-Communist crusaders. Finally, both prized scientific community as a salve to the apparent failure of Enlightenment values.Yet their responses to the use of the atom bomb, the testing of the hydrogen bomb, and the treachery of domestic politics differed markedly. Bethe, who drew confidence from scientific achievement and integration into the physics community, preserved a deep integrity. By accepting a modest role, he continued to influence policy and contributed to the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963. In contrast, Oppenheimer first embodied a new scientific persona—the scientist who creates knowledge and technology affecting all humanity and boldly addresses their impact—and then could not carry its burden. His desire to retain insider status, combined with his isolation from creative work and collegial scientific community, led him to compromise principles and, ironically, to lose prestige and fall victim to other insiders.S. S. Schweber draws on his vast knowledge of science and its history—in addition to his unique access to the personalities involved—to tell a tale of two men that will enthrall readers interested in science, history, and the lives and minds of great thinkers.War in Social Thought: Hobbes to the Present
Par Hans Joas, Wolfgang Knöbl. 2013
A sweeping history of social theories about war and peace, from Hobbes to the twenty-first centuryThis book, the first of…
its kind, provides a sweeping critical history of social theories about war and peace from Hobbes to the present. Distinguished social theorists Hans Joas and Wolfgang Knöbl present both a broad intellectual history and an original argument as they trace the development of thinking about war over more than 350 years—from the premodern era to the period of German idealism and the Scottish and French enlightenments, and then from the birth of sociology in the nineteenth century through the twentieth century. While focusing on social thought, the book draws on many disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, and political science.Joas and Knöbl demonstrate the profound difficulties most social thinkers—including liberals, socialists, and those intellectuals who could be regarded as the first sociologists—had in coming to terms with the phenomenon of war, the most obvious form of large-scale social violence. With only a few exceptions, these thinkers, who believed deeply in social progress, were unable to account for war because they regarded it as marginal or archaic, and on the verge of disappearing. This overly optimistic picture of the modern world persisted in social theory even in the twentieth century, as most sociologists and social theorists either ignored war and violence in their theoretical work or tried to explain it away. The failure of the social sciences and especially sociology to understand war, Joas and Knöbl argue, must be seen as one of the greatest weaknesses of disciplines that claim to give a convincing diagnosis of our times.A major revision of our understanding of long-range bombing, this book examines how Anglo-American ideas about "strategic" bombing were formed…
and implemented. It argues that ideas about bombing civilian targets rested on--and gained validity from--widespread but substantially erroneous assumptions about the nature of modern industrial societies and their vulnerability to aerial bombardment. These assumptions were derived from the social and political context of the day and were maintained largely through cognitive error and bias. Tami Davis Biddle explains how air theorists, and those influenced by them, came to believe that strategic bombing would be an especially effective coercive tool and how they responded when their assumptions were challenged. Biddle analyzes how a particular interpretation of the World War I experience, together with airmen's organizational interests, shaped interwar debates about strategic bombing and preserved conceptions of its potentially revolutionary character. This flawed interpretation as well as a failure to anticipate implementation problems were revealed as World War II commenced. By then, the British and Americans had invested heavily in strategic bombing. They saw little choice but to try to solve the problems in real time and make long-range bombing as effective as possible. Combining narrative with analysis, this book presents the first-ever comparative history of British and American strategic bombing from its origins through 1945. In examining the ideas and rhetoric on which strategic bombing depended, it offers critical insights into the validity and robustness of those ideas--not only as they applied to World War II but as they apply to contemporary warfare.On War and Leadership: The Words of Combat Commanders from Frederick the Great to Norman Schwarzkopf
Par Michael Owen Connelly. 2002
What can we learn about leadership and the experience of war from the best combat leaders the world has ever…
known? This book takes us behind the scenes and to the front lines of the major wars of the past 250 years through the words of twenty combat commanders. What they have to say--which is remarkably similar across generational, national, and ideological divides--is a fascinating take on military history by those who lived it. It is also worthwhile reading for anyone, from any walk of life, who makes executive decisions. The leaders showcased here range from Frederick the Great to Norman Schwarzkopf. They include such diverse figures as Napoleon Bonaparte, commanders on both sides of the Civil War (William Tecumseh Sherman and Stonewall Jackson), German and American World War II generals (Rommel and Patton), a veteran of the Arab-Israeli wars (Moshe Dayan), and leaders from both sides of the Vietnam War (Vo Nguyen Giap and Harold Moore). What they have had in common is an unrivaled understanding of the art of command and a willingness to lead from the front. All earned the respect and loyalty of those they led--and moved them to risk death. The practices of these commanders apply to any leadership situation, whether military, business, political, athletic, or other. Their words reveal techniques for anticipating the competition, leading through example, taking care of the "troops," staying informed, turning bad luck to advantage, improvising, and making bold decisions. Leader after leader emphasizes the importance of up-front "muddy boots" leadership and reveals what it takes to persevere and win. Identifying a pattern of proven leadership, this book will benefit anyone who aspires to lead a country, a squadron, a company, or a basketball team. It is a unique distillation of two and a half centuries of military wisdom.NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone
Par David P. Auerswald, Stephen M. Saideman. 2014
Modern warfare is almost always multilateral to one degree or another, requiring countries to cooperate as allies or coalition partners.…
Yet as the war in Afghanistan has made abundantly clear, multilateral cooperation is neither straightforward nor guaranteed. Countries differ significantly in what they are willing to do and how and where they are willing to do it. Some refuse to participate in dangerous or offensive missions. Others change tactical objectives with each new commander. Some countries defer to their commanders while others hold them to strict account. NATO in Afghanistan explores how government structures and party politics in NATO countries shape how battles are waged in the field. Drawing on more than 250 interviews with senior officials from around the world, David Auerswald and Stephen Saideman find that domestic constraints in presidential and single-party parliamentary systems--in countries such as the United States and Britain respectively--differ from those in countries with coalition governments, such as Germany and the Netherlands. As a result, different countries craft different guidelines for their forces overseas, most notably in the form of military caveats, the often-controversial limits placed on deployed troops. Providing critical insights into the realities of alliance and coalition warfare, NATO in Afghanistan also looks at non-NATO partners such as Australia, and assesses NATO's performance in the 2011 Libyan campaign to show how these domestic political dynamics are by no means unique to Afghanistan.Nasser's Gamble draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present…
a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as "my Vietnam." Jesse Ferris argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi-Egyptian struggle over Yemen, Ferris demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the "Arab Cold War" set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, Nasser's Gamble brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011.Nuclear Logics examines why some states seek nuclear weapons while others renounce them. Looking closely at nine cases in East…
Asia and the Middle East, Etel Solingen finds two distinct regional patterns. In East Asia, the norm since the late 1960s has been to forswear nuclear weapons, and North Korea, which makes no secret of its nuclear ambitions, is the anomaly. In the Middle East the opposite is the case, with Iran, Iraq, Israel, and Libya suspected of pursuing nuclear-weapons capabilities, with Egypt as the anomaly in recent decades.Identifying the domestic conditions underlying these divergent paths, Solingen argues that there are clear differences between states whose leaders advocate integration in the global economy and those that reject it. Among the former are countries like South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan, whose leaders have had stronger incentives to avoid the political, economic, and other costs of acquiring nuclear weapons. The latter, as in most cases in the Middle East, have had stronger incentives to exploit nuclear weapons as tools in nationalist platforms geared to helping their leaders survive in power. Solingen complements her bold argument with other logics explaining nuclear behavior, including security dilemmas, international norms and institutions, and the role of democracy and authoritarianism. Her account charts the most important frontier in understanding nuclear proliferation: grasping the relationship between internal and external political survival. Nuclear Logics is a pioneering book that is certain to provide an invaluable resource for researchers, teachers, and practitioners while reframing the policy debate surrounding nonproliferation.Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle
Par Stephen Biddle. 2004
In war, do mass and materiel matter most? Will states with the largest, best equipped, information-technology-rich militaries invariably win? The…
prevailing answer today among both scholars and policymakers is yes. But this is to overlook force employment, or the doctrine and tactics by which materiel is actually used. In a landmark reconception of battle and war, this book provides a systematic account of how force employment interacts with materiel to produce real combat outcomes. Stephen Biddle argues that force employment is central to modern war, becoming increasingly important since 1900 as the key to surviving ever more lethal weaponry. Technological change produces opposite effects depending on how forces are employed; to focus only on materiel is thus to risk major error--with serious consequences for both policy and scholarship. In clear, fluent prose, Biddle provides a systematic account of force employment's role and shows how this account holds up under rigorous, multimethod testing. The results challenge a wide variety of standard views, from current expectations for a revolution in military affairs to mainstream scholarship in international relations and orthodox interpretations of modern military history. Military Power will have a resounding impact on both scholarship in the field and on policy debates over the future of warfare, the size of the military, and the makeup of the defense budget.Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age
Par Russell F. Weigley. 1986
The classic reference volume on the theory and practice of warThe essays in this volume analyze war, its strategic characterisitics,…
and its political and social functions over the past five centuries. The diversity of its themes and the broad perspectives applied to them make the book a work of general history as much as a history of the theory and practice of war from the Renaissance to the present. Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age takes the first part of its title from an earlier collection of essays, published by Princeton University Press in 1943, which became a classic of historical scholarship. Three essays are repinted from the earlier book while four others have been extensively revised. The rest—twenty-two essays—are new.The subjects addressed range from major theorists and political and military leaders to impersonal forces. Machiavelli, Clausewitz, and Marx and Engels are discussed, as are Napoleon, Churchill, and Mao. Other essays trace the interaction of theory and experience over generations—the evolution of American strategy, for instance, or the emergence of revolutionary war in the modern world. Still others analyze the strategy of particular conflicts—the First and Second World Wars—or the relationship between technology, policy, and war in the nuclear age. Whatever its theme, each essay places the specifics of military thought and action in their political, social, and economic environment. Together, the contributors have produced a book that reinterprets and illuminates war, one of the most powerful forces in history and one that cannot be controlled in the future without an understanding of its past.Cambodia, 1975-1978: Rendezvous with Death
Par Karl D. Jackson. 1989
One of the most devastating periods in twentieth-century history was the rule of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge over…
Cambodia. From April 1975 to the beginning of the Vietnamese occupation in late December 1978, the country underwent perhaps the most violent and far-reaching of all modern revolutions. These six essays search for what can be explained in the ultimately inexplicable evils perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge. Accompanying them is a photo essay that provides shocking visual evidence of the tragedy of Cambodia's autogenocide. "The most important examination of the subject so far.... Without in any way denying the horror and brutality of the Khmers Rouges, the essays adopt a principle of detached analysis which makes their conclusion far more significant and convincing than the superficial images emanating from the television or cinema screen." --Ralph Smith, The Times Literary Supplement "A book that belongs on the shelf of every scholar interested in Cambodia, revolution, or communism.... Answers to questions such as `What effect did Khmer society have on the reign of the Khmer Rouge?' focus on understanding, rather than merely describing." --Randall Scott Clemons, Perspectives on Political ScienceWar and Human Nature
Par Stephen Peter Rosen. 2004
Why did President John F. Kennedy choose a strategy of confrontation during the Cuban missile crisis even though his secretary…
of defense stated that the presence of missiles in Cuba made no difference? Why did large numbers of Iraqi troops surrender during the Gulf War even though they had been ordered to fight and were capable of doing so? Why did Hitler declare war on the United States knowing full well the power of that country? War and Human Nature argues that new findings about the way humans are shaped by their inherited biology may help provide answers to such questions. This seminal work by former Defense Department official Stephen Peter Rosen contends that human evolutionary history has affected the way we process the information we use to make decisions. The result is that human choices and calculations may be very different from those predicted by standard models of rational behavior. This notion is particularly true in the area of war and peace, Rosen contends. Human emotional arousal affects how people learn the lessons of history. For example, stress and distress influence people's views of the future, and testosterone levels play a role in human social conflict. This thought-provoking and timely work explores the mind that has emerged from the biological sciences over the last generation. In doing so, it helps shed new light on many persistent puzzles in the study of war.Making War at Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community
Par Kenneth T. MacLeish. 2013
An intimate look at war through the lives of soldiers and their families at Fort HoodMaking War at Fort Hood…
offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their families at and around the US Army's Fort Hood in central Texas. He shows how war's reach extends far beyond the battlefield into military communities where violence is as routine, boring, and normal as it is shocking and traumatic.Fort Hood is one of the largest military installations in the world, and many of the 55,000 personnel based there have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. MacLeish provides intimate portraits of Fort Hood's soldiers and those closest to them, drawing on numerous in-depth interviews and diverse ethnographic material. He explores the exceptional position that soldiers occupy in relation to violence--not only trained to fight and kill, but placed deliberately in harm's way and offered up to die. The death and destruction of war happen to soldiers on purpose. MacLeish interweaves gripping narrative with critical theory and anthropological analysis to vividly describe this unique condition of vulnerability. Along the way, he sheds new light on the dynamics of military family life, stereotypes of veterans, what it means for civilians to say "thank you" to soldiers, and other questions about the sometimes ordinary, sometimes agonizing labor of making war.Making War at Fort Hood is the first ethnography to examine the everyday lives of the soldiers, families, and communities who personally bear the burden of America's most recent wars.Cowardice: A Brief History
Par Chris Walsh. 2014
A provocative look at how cowardice has been understood from ancient times to the presentCoward. It's a grave insult, likely…
to provoke anger, shame, even violence. But what exactly is cowardice? When terrorists are called cowards, does it mean the same as when the term is applied to soldiers? And what, if anything, does cowardice have to do with the rest of us? Bringing together sources from court-martial cases to literary and film classics such as Dante's Inferno, The Red Badge of Courage, and The Thin Red Line, Cowardice recounts the great harm that both cowards and the fear of seeming cowardly have done, and traces the idea of cowardice’s power to its evolutionary roots. But Chris Walsh also shows that this power has faded, most dramatically on the battlefield. Misconduct that earlier might have been punished as cowardice has more recently often been treated medically, as an adverse reaction to trauma, and Walsh explores a parallel therapeutic shift that reaches beyond war, into the realms of politics, crime, philosophy, religion, and love.Yet, as Walsh indicates, the therapeutic has not altogether triumphed—contempt for cowardice endures, and he argues that such contempt can be a good thing. Courage attracts much more of our attention, but rigorously understanding cowardice may be more morally useful, for it requires us to think critically about our duties and our fears, and it helps us to act ethically when fear and duty conflict.Richly illustrated and filled with fascinating stories and insights, Cowardice is the first sustained analysis of a neglected but profound and pervasive feature of human experience.