Samuel Moyn, "Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War" (FSG, 2021)

New Books in American Studies · Dec 6, 2021 · 57m

Is it possible that efforts to make war more humane can actually make it more common and thus more destructive? This tension at the heart of this query lies at the heart of Samuel Moyn's new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2021). He draws fascinating connections between literary figures such as Tolstoy and Bertha von Suttner, civil society organizations such as the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch, and politicans and military figures to try to understand a central question: why, when we have done so much to limit the violence…