Lawrence Freedman, The Future of War: A History (New York: PublicAffairs, 2017) ("This book locates the writing on future war in the concerns of the time. The aim is not just to assess how prescient different writers were, or whether they could have done better given what was known about new weaponry or the experience of recent wars, but to explore the prevailing understandings about the causes of war and their likely conduct and course. How people imagined the wars of the future affected the conduct and course of those wars when they finally arrived. Unanticipated wars, in forms that had not been imagined, left participants and commentators struggling to understand where they had come from and how they might best be fought." Id. at xix.).
Claudio Magris, Blameless, translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel (New Haven & London: Margellos World Republic of Letters Book/Yale U. Press, 2017) (From the book jacket: "Claudio Magris's searing new novel ruthlessly confronts the human obsession with war and its savagery throughout the ages. His tale centers on a man who is maniacally devoted to the creation of a Museum of War which involves both a horrible secret and the hope of redemption and peace. Luisa Brooks, his museum's curator, a descendant of victims of Jewish exile and of black slavery, has a complex dilemma: will the collections she exhibits save humanity from repeating its tragic and violent past? Or might the display of articles of war actually valorize evil atrocities? [] With a multitude of stories spanning an assortment of geographical settings and time periods, the author investigates individual sorrow, the societal burden of justice aborted, and the ways in which memory and historical evidence are sabotaged or sometimes salvaged.").
Brian Castner, All the Ways We Kill and Die: An Elegy for a Fallen Comrade, and the Hunt for His Killer (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2017) (From the book jacket: "Is the bomb maker who killed Matt the same man American forces have been hunting since Iraq, known as the Engineer. "In this nonfiction thriller, Castner takes us inside the manhunt for this elusive figure, meeting maimed survivors, the forensics teams who gather post-blast evidence, the wonks who collect intelligence, and the drone pilots and contractors tasked to kill. "His investigation reveals how warfare has changed since the surge in Iraq, becoming individualized even as it has become seemingly remote and high-tech, with or drones, bomb disposal robots, and CSI-like techniques. As we use technology to identify, locate, and take out the planners and bomb makers, the chilling lesson is that the hunters are also being hunted, and the other side--from Al Qaeda to ISIS--has been selecting its own high-value targets.").
