The Causes of War

By Geoffrey Blainey,

Book cover of The Causes of War

Book description

The third edition of Geoffery Blainey’s highly acclaimed study on the causes of war has been expanded and updated to include a complete discussion of World War II and the road towards nuclear war.

Analyzing all international wars since 1700, Causes of War solves the riddle of why some wars…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Causes of War as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I learned of this book reading The Peacemaker’s Code: Malhotra’s novel includes some of the peacekeeping concepts from The Causes of War. 

Blainey’s main idea is that a major factor in war is a country being very optimistic about their chances of winning a war. And the problem there is that people often have distorted, overly optimistic ideas about their own abilities. They may not understand how much pain they and the people they care about might really be in for. Optimism can be deadly. 

Blainey’s book is also great for learning about world history. And Blainey is frequently very…

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