The Future of War, Lawrence Freedman
The Future of War, Lawrence Freedman
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The Future of War
A History

Author: Lawrence Freedman

Narrator: Michael Page

Unabridged: 12 hr 59 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/10/2017

Synopsis

In 1912, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, wrote a short story about a war fought from underwater submersibles that included the sinking of passenger ships. At the time, it was dismissed by the British generals and admirals of the day not because the idea of submarines was technically unfeasible, but because no one could imagine that any nation would be so depraved as to sink civilian merchant shipps. The future of war more often than not surprises us less because of some fantastic technical or engineering dimension but because of some human, political, or moral threshold that we had never imagined wanting to cross. As Lawrence Freedman shows, the future of war has a past and a present. Ideas of war, strategies for warfare and its practice, and organizing principles of war all have rich and varied origins which have shaped the minds of those who conceive the next war. Freedman shows how war can be studied systematically and empirically to provide a firm foundation for enlightened policy. The Future of War—which covers civil wars to as yet unknown nuclear conflicts, proxy wars (real) to the Cold War (not), fashionably small wars to the War to End All Wars (it didn’t)—is filled with insight and fascinating nuggets of military history and culture from one of the most brilliant military and strategic historians of his generation.

About Lawrence Freedman

Lawrence Freedman is emeritus professor of war studies at King's College London. He joined King's in 1982 as professor of war studies and was vice-principal of the College until 2013. He was official historian of the Falklands Campaign and a member of the official inquiry into the UK's participation in the Iraq War. He was knighted in 2004. His books include Strategy: A History and The Future of War: A History.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Olethros on May 04, 2021

-De más a menos.- Género. Ensayo. Lo que nos cuenta. El libro La guerra futura (publicación original: The Future of War. A History, 2017), con el subtítulo Un estudio sobre el pasado y el presente, propone un viaje sobre las visiones, desde finales del siglo XIX hasta la actualidad, del concepto, cons......more

Goodreads review by Michael on January 26, 2023

The Future of War is a magisterial synthesis of conflict studies by one of the field's leading practitioners. I'll admit I was half hoping for a review of weird military futurism, but this is a serious study of how people have thought about war, from Victorian invasion literature such as The Battle......more

Goodreads review by James on June 19, 2018

You might ask how a book can be about both the future of war and a history of it. Lawrence Freedman, one of today's leading academic thinkers in military affairs and the nature of war, has given us this book explaining how nations of the recent past and today expected to conduct the wars they unders......more

Goodreads review by Kara on October 18, 2017

Not actually my cup of tea, The Future of War: A History is a massive data dump and analysis of what we used to think about the future of warfare. Lawrence Freedman has clearly Done the Research, and I have to hand it to him: there’s compelling stuff here. Thanks to NetGalley and Public Affairs for......more

Goodreads review by Imran on November 25, 2017

The title of master strategic writer Lawrence Freedman's most latest book is titled 'The Future of War: A History'; itself an interesting premise. Instead of simply writing another prediction on future warfare as many polemologists have done at some point in their careers, Freedman instead sought to......more

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