Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War - Hardcover

Ehrenreich, Barbara

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805050779 ISBN 13: 9780805050776

Publisher: Metropolitan Books, 1997

Synopsis

An ALA Notable Book
A New York Times Notable Book

In Blood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich confronts the mystery of the human attraction to violence: What draws our species to war and even makes us see it as a kind of sacred undertaking? Blood Rites takes us on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century "total war." Sifting through the fragile records of prehistory, Ehrenreich discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place--not in a "killer instinct" unique to the males of our species but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experience of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception, rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that will transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.

About this title

Review:

In this ambitious work, Barbara Ehrenreich offers a daring explanation for humans' propensity to wage war. Rather than approach the subject from a physiological perspective, pinpointing instinct or innate aggressiveness as the violent culprit, she reaches back to primitive man's fear of predators and the anxieties associated with life in the food chain. To deal with the reality of living as prey, she argues that blood rites were created to dramatize and validate the life-and-death struggle. Jumping ahead to the modern age, Ehrenreich brands nationalism a more sophisticated form of blood ritual, a phenomenon that conjures similar fears of predation, whether in the form of lost territory or the more extreme ethnic cleansing. Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War may not offer a cure for human aggression, but the author does present a convincing argument for the difficulties associated with achieving peace.

About the Author:

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of nine widely acclaimed books, including Fear of Falling and The Hearts of Men. A regular essayist for Time, she has written for every major magazine and newspaper in the country. She lives near Key West, Florida.

About this edition

• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0805050779
• ISBN 13: 9780805050776
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304