|
Product Description
In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow—banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another—to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the seventeenth century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the twentieth. His central argument is that a commercial transformation of world society in the eleventh century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces as well as to the commands of rulers. Only in our own time, suggests McNeill, are command economies replacing the market control of large-scale human effort. The Pursuit of Power does not solve the problems of the present, but its discoveries, hypotheses, and sheer breadth of learning do offer a perspective on our current fears and, as McNeill hopes, "a ground for wiser action."
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
- The Battle for the Falklands
- The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800
- The Face of Battle
- The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme
- Carnage and Culture Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power
- Battle: A History Of Combat And Culture
- Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
- The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000
- Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle
- Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Canto Classics)
*If this is not the "The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000" product you were looking for, you can check the other results by clicking this link. Details were last updated on Nov 14, 2024 07:40 +08.