Truncating war

Gwynne Dyer, The Shortest History of War (2022)

Not long ago, I went to see a public lecture by military historian Gwynne Dyer called “War in the 21st century.” The title did not speak to the bulk of the talk, which ended up being a wide-ranging discussion of the human behavioural impulse towards violence. A good thing, because that ended up being a more interesting topic to sit through.

The talk came in the wake of Dyer’s most recent book, The Shortest History of War, which likewise has a broa...