Out of Weakness: Healing the Wounds That Drive Us to War (Bantam New Age Books)

I'm amazed to be the first one reviewing this exceptional work. It has considerably clarified my views on militarism-pacifism and power relations between individual and group. Not only the author's ability to synthesise knolwedge of diverse fields (politics & national security, culture & history, psychology, religion...) but his lucid thinking and fluent use of language really bring matters home. Sometimes I asked myself whether "Out of Weakness..." is a professional academic account of extremely complex and controversial issues or a poetic parable much to the like of Indian chieftains' famous orations. Obviously it is both - something that one does not come across very often - as it reflects the synchronization of head and heart (thinking and feeling) in it's best. The latter in a sense being the subject matter of the whole book - how anxiety and rage is produced and regulated in (inter)societal context, how it is supressed and what are the compensatory mechanisms of this supression (narcissism and paranoia); and how the latter bring about and breed on war. And last but not least, how this self-perpetuating situation might be overcome. If this topic is of serious interest, you can't be disappointed in a more recent work by James DeMeo, "Saharasia".