100 books like Abolishing State Violence

This was one of the best books I’ve read in a very long time. Its conclusions will be vigorously resisted by many and yet, in a certain light, considered perfectly obvious to some others.

The central conclusion—that ending the institution of war is entirely up to us to choose—was, arguably, reached by (among many others before and since) John Paul Sartre sitting in a café utilizing exactly no research. But Horgan is a writer for “Scientific American,” and approaches the question of whether war can be ended as a scientist. It’s all about research.

He concludes that war can be ended, has been ended in various times and places, and is in the process (an entirely reversible process) of being ended on Earth right now.

The possibility that Costa Rica did something significant and hugely beneficial by abolishing its military is generally dealt with by ignoring it, but sometimes by making excuses for it—by claiming that Costa Rica secretly really does have a military or claiming that the U.S. military defends Costa Rica, or claiming that Costa Rica’s example is unlike and unuseful for any other country.

We would all benefit from reading this fantastic book. Here, I learned not to ignore what Costa Rica means and learned that Costa Rica does not secretly have a military, that the United States military does not serve any function for Costa Rica, and that many of the factors that probably contributed to Costa Rica’s abolition of its military, as well as many of the benefits that have probably resulted, are probably subject to duplication elsewhere, even though no two countries are identical, human affairs are highly complicated,… show more.

The history of militarism isn't one of goodness and glory marred by a "few bad apples," one or two misguided wars. Here is an avalanche of examples. If your mind doesn’t go numb, you will feel—as I did—an urge to take a shower after closing this book.

This is the naming and shaming of names. The author admits that he’s only scratching the surface. But he’s scratching it in many different places, and the result ought to be persuasive for most people, but it was not for me. Sorensen demonstrates how corruption and sociopathic destruction feed off each other, generating the real problem: organized and glorified mass homicide.

This book makes a powerful case that humanitarian war no more exists than philanthropic child abuse or benevolent torture. I’m not sure the actual motivations of wars are limited to economic and strategic interests—which seems to forget the insane, power-mad, and sadistic motivations—but I am sure that no humanitarian war has ever benefitted humanity.

This book makes that very clear. It does not take the approach so widely recommended of watering down the truth so that the reader is only gently nudged in the right direction from where he or she is starting. There’s no getting 90% reassuringly wrong to make the 10% palatable here. This is a book for either people who have some general notion of what war is or people who aren’t traumatized by jumping into an unfamiliar perspective and thinking about it. Refreshing!

This book is written for 10+ readers and is about two soldiers holding guns.

I enjoyed the obvious visual absurdity of two adults hiding in deep holes on opposing pages. As the story progresses, it becomes obvious they’ve been taught by a manual to believe that the other side is a monster, an enemy to be killed. Near the end, when both soldiers are fed up with the whole situation, they venture out of their holes only to discover that the other man is a human being with a family and home just like them! The other man was also taught by a manual to believe a story about someone they’d never met.

In the funny and eminently sensible ending, each of them throws a bottle containing a message into the other’s hole: "Let’s end this war." 

As Jimmy Carter nears the end of his life – a life of contributions to the world – I want to thank him for his book. His book is part historical observation, saying what historians oft-times decline to say, while being prophetically correct in recounting of history and the predictable consequences the regions faced unless action is taken.

The book was published in 2006, long after Carter left the presidency, at a time saying what others were not saying about the region. He made me a participant–as a reader–telling historical truths that I was sure he would be profoundly criticized for – oh, was he. 

I love this book because Jimmy Carter’s book is a reminder that writing non-fiction can be fraught, the same as doing an act which does not make friends. He took a risk and used his credibility to tell the truth, and as a reader, I… show more.

I bought Kalyvas’s book back in 2009 as a doctoral student looking to understand the social science literature on civil war violence and finished reading it only in 2023 as an associate professor interested in studying target choice for a class I was teaching.

Though singularly focused on civil wars, the book goes deep in constructing theoretical arguments to support the premise of the book and travels broad in applying the models across various civil wars. It teaches readers to look beneath the surface to understand what we observe on the outside.

It is a great resource for those looking for good examples of how to develop a theoretical model. Finally, I also highly recommend this book to graduate students looking for research ideas.

Stone’s debut novel, a brilliant and prophetic book that is seldom classified as a thriller, but which finds its hero, Rheinhardt, an alcoholic former clarinetist and sometimes disc jockey, slowly unraveling a dark political conspiracy full of apocalyptic potential. Cynical, funny, lost, but deeply moral, Rheinhardt moved me intensely.

Prior to this book, most works on the long history of terrorism applied contemporary definitions of the term to various incidents throughout world history. Wilson turned the page on this framework. Killing Strangers analyzes the gamut of political violence in Western Europe and North America since the late eighteenth century to explain how we’ve arrived at a contemporary reality characterized, in part, by recurring fear of impersonal atrocities carried out in public gathering spaces. Wilson shows how, on one hand, the rise of the modern bureaucratic state’s “monopoly” on legitimate force pushed most violent challengers to the fringes of society. On the other hand, various technological innovations—from dynamite and automobiles to commercial airlines and satellite television—offered new possibilities for those intent on violent havoc. 

One of the great historians of our time just published the best overview of this period we have yet and it places the Red Scare and Red Summer (widespread attacks on Black communities on an unprecedented scale) of 1919 at the center of its 1917-1921 sweep. We get a great picture of how the World War I home front escalated repression and the U.S. connections to an explosive international situation during and after the war, including the Russian Revolution.