An Instinct for War - Scenes from the Battlefields of History

By Stefan Isaksson

An Instinct for War - Scenes from the Battlefields of History
Roger Spiller
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
403 pages
ISBN: 0674019415

Well, these days it’s very difficult NOT to find books about war whenever you enter your favorite bookstore, especially about World War II, but also most other wars ever fought by mankind. People seem unable to get enough of books about how we manage to kill each other left and right, always have and always will, and few people doubt that as long as there are people on this planet there’ll be wars, as well.

So, among all these books about war, will any of them be a real necessity? Sure. An Instinct for War definitely is.

For without a moment of doubt I feel perfectly honest when I say that Roger Spiller’s book is the most fascinating book about war I’ve ever read. Period. Not only that, it’s also the most unique book about war I’ve ever read; or in other words, An Instinct for War is just as different as it is worth reading. And I still mourn the fact that I’ve already finished it…

So what, then, makes this book so special? Well, because all stories are fiction. Or, perhaps not really fiction in the true sense of the word. Spiller’s very first sentence goes as follows: “Some of this actually happened an some of it didn’t, but all of it is as true as I can make it.” With this, Spiller means that his stories – about different wars throughout history – all are meant to show how mankind has viewed war and warfare, its nature, shape, and conduct.

For instance, the reader will follow a surgeon in the Napoleon Wars and a soldier’s last days during the Civil War, but it’s the last story, The Discovery of Kansas, that is the highlight of the book. Here an eerie, yet fully believable, scenario of the future is painted, where modern warfare, which isn’t about man-to-man combat in the battlefield, in all its horrors.

It’s a gloomy vision, much darker than what both Aldous Huxley and George Orwell ever thought up, but it’s so good that this story in itself is worth every single penny you paid for the book.

Buy An Instinct for War, read the stories, and be amazed of how bizarre the human animal really is.