About this item
In the years since 9/11, we have entered an age of endless war. With little debate or discussion, the United States carries out military operations around the globe. It hardly matters who's president or whether liberals or conservatives operate the levers of power. The United States exercises dominion everywhere.In Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, Samuel Moyn asks a troubling but urgent question: What if efforts to make war more ethical -- to ban torture and limit civilian casualties -- have only shored up the military enterprise and made it sturdier? To advance this case, Moyn looks back at a century and a half of passionate arguments about the ethics of using force. In the nineteenth century, the founders of the Red Cross struggled mightily to make war less lethal even as they acknowledged its inevitability.
About the Author
Samuel Moyn is professor of law and history at Harvard University. He is the author of (2015) , among other books, as well as editor of the journal . He also writes regularly for and
