Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Why We Fight - Mike Martin
eTextbook alternate format product

Instant online reading.
Don't wait for delivery!

Go digital and save!

Why We Fight

By: Mike Martin

Hardcover | 17 May 2018

At a Glance

Hardcover


RRP $49.95

$44.75

10%OFF

or 4 interest-free payments of $11.19 with

 or 

Available for Backorder. We will order this from our supplier however there isn't a current ETA.

Why are we willing to die for our countries? Does religion precipitate violence? Do pride, anger and vengeance lead to war? Can ideology persuade someone to blow themselves up?

This ground-breaking book explores how tens of thousands of years of evolution have shaped our brains to fight, and not to fight. Drawing on insights gleaned as a soldier and a scholar, and a biologist, Mike Martin explains how the lives and deaths of our ancestors have shaped our behavior to propel us towards conflict, even as that option makes less and less sense.

Why We Fight highlights the continuums between animal and human individual violence and explains how mankind has massively reduced the preponderance of warfare by creating larger and larger social groups. Together, these arguments form a compelling demonstration of humans' evolutionary predisposition to warfare, rooted in a prehistoric past when going to war actually increased your chances of survival. Our contemporary world is marked by the disintegration of social groups, which inevitably increases the likelihood of conflict -- yet, Martin concludes, humans may still ultimately outlive warfare altogether, consigning it to history.
Industry Reviews
'Fascinating [and] accessible . . . Martin's enjoyable book makes a positive contribution to a major debate'.
'[Why We Fight] should be required reading for not just biologists, psychologists and historians, but military leaders and recruiters as well.' -- British Army Journal
'Why We Fight is a pivotal book in the study of conflict. It brilliantly deploys recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience to devastating effect. It has radical implications for policies for conflict reduction: identity and status need to supplant interests and ideology as the focal points for change.' -- Professor Sir Paul Collier, author of 'The Bottom Billion'
'Anyone interested in war and international relations will find much to challenge and intrigue them in Mike Martin's application of evolutionary theory to the question of what drives men to fight.' -- Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, author of 'The Future of War: A History'
'An important and illuminating book that addresses very clearly the fundamental questions underlying the apparent paradoxes of violence and conflict.' -- Patrick Hennessey, author of 'The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars'
'This wide-ranging book explores how the evolution of the brain has shaped human behaviour in violence and war. Fascinating and insightful.' -- Stathis Kalyvas, Gladstone Professor of Government

More in Warfare & Defence

Guts and Glory : Diggers, Sport and War - Peter Rees

RRP $36.99

$28.75

22%
OFF
A Different Country - The Australian

RRP $59.99

$45.75

24%
OFF
The Rape of Nanking : The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II - Iris Chang
Nuclear War : A Scenario - Annie Jacobsen

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
Kokoda : Updated Edition - Peter FitzSimons

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
44 Days : 75 Squadron and the Fight for Australia - Michael Veitch

RRP $22.99

$20.75

10%
OFF
Eleven Bats : A story of combat, cricket and the SAS - Anthony 'Harry' Moffitt
Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E Frankl

RRP $16.99

$14.75

13%
OFF
Blitzed : Drugs in Nazi Germany - Norman Ohler

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Borneo : The Last Campaign - Michael Veitch

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
The Siege : The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS Hostage Drama - Ben Macintyre
Once Upon a Time in Space - James Bluemel

RRP $65.00

$48.99

25%
OFF
Code of Silence : How Australian Women Helped Win the War - Diana Thorp
On My Watch : Leading NATO in a Time of War - Jens Stoltenberg

RRP $39.99

$31.75

21%
OFF
Turbulence : Australian Foreign Policy in the Trump Era - Clinton Fernandes
Huey : The Helicopter That Became an Australian Aviation Icon - Mark Lax