Nothing approaching a coherent treatise on the subjects. A cherry picked list of situations where nonviolence worked and some where the author wished it worked. Not useful for someone looking to implement nonviolent resistance in 2019 America.

Interesting history of nonviolent protest and its effectiveness. It is a bit rambling and the author proves some of his points better than others. But it is extremely well researched and I found it both informative and exciting to think about. He doesn’t just deal with internal movements but the State’s role in military response. Well worth the time.

I've always been fascinated by nonviolence - it's one of those political tactics that I've seen touted, but secretly thought of as largely ineffective. After all, if the government has shut a large group of people out of the decision-making process, whether by disenfranchising a subset of the population or by becoming a dicatorship, I had trouble seeing how getting a bunch of them together and, for example, chaining them to something, was really going to change anything.

I think I believed this in part because, growing up, my impression of how political actions could be effective came from movies and occasional books. When forced into a 300 page or two hour narrative structure, things like the civil rights movement have to follow a brief arc - increasing intensity, big climax, success!

Kurlansky's book is an antidote to this overly simplified view of how change can be brought about in society - even if the group agitating for change isn't in possession of the usual sources of power. He draws explicit contrast between nonviolence and pacifism - pacifism being a decision not to engage in conflict, while nonviolence is a conscious choice to challenge the existing order and actively resist it, but to do so without bloodshed (at least on the part of the challengers).

Even if you don't read the whole book, the opening is a complete knockout - Kurlansky talks about how many religions were initially largely nonviolent or even pacifistic, and came to condone or even encourage violence only after becoming embedded in larger political structures. His focus is Christianity, and he goes into detail about how early Christian converts in Rome would literally lay down their weapons and refuse to engage in battle, a far cry from the later Crusades, for example.

For all its weighty topics, Kurlansky's writing is engaging and thoughtful, and the book is a solid, fast read.

If we want peace, we will have to be willing to suffer for it, and maybe even die for it, but isn't that what we say about "freedom," and that the cost is worth it? Why are we willing to kill others in war, even if that means we have a good chance of getting hurt or killed ourselves, but we are unwilling to refuse to kill, if that means we might be hurt or killed? The human mind is a strange thing. Kurlansky does a terrific job of pointing out not just the suffering of war, but the absurdity of it, and the deception behind it. Not that you didn't already know that. But the value here is that he backs up his assertions with myriad examples from history, and shows that the ideas of nonviolence have been around a lot longer than Gandhi. He exposes the state -- any state -- for what it is, by explaining why those who are committed to nonviolence are and have always been its greatest enemies. He even questions conventional wisdom about the American Revolution, the necessity of World War II, and the arms race that supposedly brought down the Berlin Wall. A terrific tonic for the constant war glorification in our culture today. Other authors might take a more religious approach to the questions, whereas Kurlansky makes an argument from the practical perspective: It works. It is the only thing that works. From whatever angle you see it, only light can drive out the darkness.

You know that feeling when a book showers you with intriguing ideas and historical events that you knew nothing about. Well, this book made me feel that and more.

The basic thesis of this book is this: Nonviolence has to be an active force that goes out and challenges authority. And one needs true grit to be a nonviolent protestor. Mark Kurlansky shows us throughout history some true leaders in nonviolent. His personal favorites are William Lloyd Garrison, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. Kurlansky weaves the book together (at least the 2006 version) into several chapters that are chronological and have guided by a theme. The target bad boys in this history are always the same: state institutions, such as organized religion, the military, and the government. The best chapter was his last, "Random Outbreaks of Hope," in which the author looks towards our recent past and examines the current state of nonviolent movements during the 1960s and the Bush Wars, not to mention examples of success in South Africa and the failure of nonviolence in Israel. If you have a basic understanding of the major events of world history this book may not be for you. Too many times did I get stuck in a simple rehash of Civil War politics or motivations of the Crusaders. The other tedious issue with this book is that you can almost anticipate each chapter. Nonviolent guys will lose, provide an example for the next generation, which will probably fail as well. But dammit man did they come close! Overall this is a very interesting take on a way to read the world. I would suggest it to those who want a deeper understanding of nonviolence or social justice, but to those who know the familiar examples of history I advise to move on.

A strong start wavers as Mr. Kurlansky closes in on modern times. The book has a powerful message: namely, that violence, regardless of rationale, begets violence and should be avoided. In a world that seems to increasingly embrace violence as an acceptable part of a civilized society, I wish I could wholeheartedly endorse this book.

Unfortunately, Mr. Kurlansky too often simplifies necessary complexities in favor of making his point. This includes dismissing contrary opinions and analyses. Some of his examples – Denmark in World War II, for example – fail to take into account the totality of circumstance. That he erred by a decade in referencing when America and Britain granted suffrage to women makes me wonder what else might be incorrect.

But the message is important. It’s not a perfect book, but in grounding its arguments on a historic rather than religious basis, Nonviolence makes for a unique and worthwhile read. Quasi-recommended.

The argument never goes info the depth it needs. Then the civil war chapter has some strange lost cause defense, including blaming Haitian slaves for European blockade post revolution. Interesting parts are there but few and far between.

3.5/5, but I have to round down. Good overview of nonviolence movements throughout history, but only nominally engages in counterarguments.

The earlier chapters and some of the concepts felt like a good challenges to my preexisting ideas. However, a Stokely Carmichael quote came to mind throughout the book: "he only made one fallacious assumption: In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent has to have a conscience. The United States has no conscience."

I feel like engagement of this quote and philosophy would have elevated this book to a higher level.

A 4.5 star effort really but I'm rounding it up to 5 as 1/2 stars are not allowed. In a short book, Mark Kurlansky manages to pack a lot of history, especially as it pertains to the history of nonviolence. The breadth covered is quite large, from ancient Christians to more modern figures like Gandhi and MLK. A key premise is that often religions start out with nonviolence at their core but once the religions are co-opted/adopted by the state/monarchy, violence seems to become part of the religion. Kurlansky details the journey of Christianity and Islam through this process, which I found very enlightening. There are 25 "lessons" about nonviolence that are listed at the end of the book; most of these are great topics for discussion. All in all, a very informative, thought provoking and entertaining book.

I read this book with the intention of expanding my perspective, given the line of work I’m in and the socialization I’ve received as an American citizen. More than anything, the information contained in this book is a smattering of different pockets of nonviolent dissidence from all over the world, throughout recorded history. For that reason, I found it valuable.

A lot of the content focuses on America’s past, especially many of the communities/state leaders/public figures that popularized nonviolence (I.e. the Quakers, certain American authors/artists, suffragettes, and Jim Crow protestors). I feel like I gained an alternate perspective about class stratifications and what they have to do with why and how America engages in warfare.

Another big focus of the book is a deep dive into different nonviolent characters throughout human history: Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Badshah Khan, William Lloyd Garrison. Exploring their stories was fairly amusing but infrequently a holistically detailed account of who each man was. I kind of felt that way throughout the whole book; that each paragraph was a mere glimpse into any given conflict, demonstration, battle, protest, etc. that Kurlansky cited, instead of a well-briefed expo on each event’s background. I suppose I could consult a civics textbook for a deeper dive into each.

As a Christian myself, I enjoyed the exploration of what true Christian values exclaim and how the Church has been evilly co-opted by governments (and even men within the papacy) across the world and through history. I agreed with Kurlansky on many of his assertions here- primarily that the moment a state claims a Christian identity, it can do nothing to stop its degradation of promoting Christian values, due to the fact that a nation will always champion borders, campaigns, and therefore war. While he explained much of this with success, there were still a few falsehoods about Christian teaching, but the central idea of Christians being peacemakers was indeed true. Kurlansky did a similar exposition about Islam, and may have handled it just as well.

Some of the conclusions drawn from the evidence and facts collected were questionable. I found myself wanting to be convinced by a few arguments but realized that some of Kurlansky’s deliveries would fall short of changing my mind. That was a bit of a bummer, but maybe it was just because the book was short and didn’t dedicate hours and hours of reading time to hashing out each arguments intricacies?

The book ends with a list of 20 or so truths about nonviolence, and as I read them, I have to concede that they are real. The list includes most of the concepts visited all throughout the book- the longer a war lasts, the more popular it becomes, people who go to war start to resemble their enemy, etc. I think that overall, I appreciate the reminder that as man, we are not built for killing one another. It’s an essential truth to remember, and for increasing my familiarity with the subject, I am grateful to Mark Kurlansky. But I can’t say exactly that I was crazy about this book lol

I was surprised and excited to learn that this was one of the topics that Kurlansky had done one of his microhistories on. After all, he had been able to take salt, dairy, and other things many of his barely think about, and devote fascinating, encompassing histories to them. So surely the concept of nonviolence would shine under the Mark Kurlansky treatment, right?

Unfortunately, my assumptions did not end up playing out as I had hoped. The history he crafts here ends up being overly broad, so much that in many instances he veered close to historical inaccuracy. And unfortunately, there were a few moments where he did just that, making this avid history-reading actually pause and cringe. For an author who has built a career on creating hyper-focused histories, this was not his best handling of the past, to put it gently.

Still, I do applaud his decision to nevertheless tackle the topic. And despite flaws, he still constructs a narrative that was solid enough to the point that when I reached the end of the book and all twenty-five lessons were listed together before me, I found it hard to disagree with any of them. Also, I cannot deny that once again Kurlansky has not only given me much to think about, but he has introduced a whole assortment of peoples, events, and more that I am eager to learn more about on my own.