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The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 355.0209
EAN: 9780226561585
ISBN: 0226561585
Label: University Of Chicago Press
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: September 15, 1984
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Studio: University Of Chicago Press
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Editorial Review:
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." "No summary can do justice to McNeill's intricate, encyclopedic treatment. . . . McNeill's erudition is stunning, as he moves easily from European to Chinese and Islamic cultures and from military and technological to socio-economic and political developments. The result is a grand synthesis of sweeping proportions and interdisciplinary character that tells us almost as much about the history of butter as the history of guns. . . . McNeill's larger accomplishment is to remind us that all humankind has a shared past and, particularly with regard to its choice of weapons and warfare, a shared stake in the future."—Stuart Rochester, Washington Post Book World "Mr. McNeill's comprehensiveness and sensitivity do for the reader what Henry James said that Turgenev's conversation did for him: they suggest 'all sorts of valuable things.' This narrative of rationality applied to irrational purposes and of ingenuity cannibalizing itself is a work of clarity, which delineates mysteries. The greatest of them, to my mind, is why human beings have never learned to cherish their own species."—Naomi Bliven, The New Yorker
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - McNeill always astounds me
A friend of mine once suggested the United States have a 'Historian Laureate,' and recommended William McNeill for the position. I could not agree more. On the first page alone I marked 3 passages to make sure I could find them in the future, and tracked down my son to point out how important they were for an understanding of mankind (he tolerated the interruption but didn't seem to catch the fever).
OK, every page thereafter does not live up to this standard, but as is usual McNeill ... Read More
Rating: - The grandest of grand strategy
This is a sweeping history of the interplay between technology, society and war by one of the preeminent historians of our generation. Moreover, it is, in this reviewer's opinion, even more relevant today than it was when first published in 1982.
McNeill, quite naturally, observed the events of the past millennium through the lens of the Cold War and came to the conclusion that the current epoch was wholly unprecedented - weapons so powerful that they made their possessors weak because ... Read More
Rating: - Despotism the default state of human governance.
Professor McNeill describes this 1982 book as a "footnote" to his famous 1963 The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community, and as a companion to his even more famous 1976 Plagues and Peoples. The subject of "The Pursuit of Power" is warfare rather than disease, as in "Plagues and People", but Prof. McNeill's conceptual approach is the same. In fact, in the introduction to this book he describes armed force as "micro-parasitism" of the human race.
This is a densely-written and ... Read More
Rating:  - Starts Strong But Quickly Devolves Into Minutia
...imho, mcneill's book starts strong, makes cogent points, but then quickly devolves into a morass of minutia...resulting in a tepid ending with no clearly stated thesis, and lukewarm impact all the way around...
...again, imho, it may have been preferable to focus on key developments that changed the course of warfare - with resulting consequences to the victors and the vanquished - then to relate how industry developed as a consequence in a ghoulish sort of 'virtuous-type-spiral', and, finally, ... Read More
Rating: - A series of wars punctuated by brief periods of peace
McNeill shows how military conflict and the advances in technology have stimulated mankind to better itself within the flux of a constantly changing balance of power. "Of War and Men" by Robt O'Connell also addresses this time honored conflict with a focus on culture, weapons technology and warfare.
A good read and an important book for those interested in a longer look at history and how we got here.
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