Review coming soon...

I didn't particularly enjoy Kurlansky's book on nonviolence--although his facts are accurate, they are often incomplete and his tone is snarky throughout. Someone whose introduction to nonviolence is this book is likely to reject the whole business.

"One of history's greatest lessons is that once the state embraces a religion, the nature of that religion changes radically. It loses its nonviolent component and becomes a force for war rather than peace. The state must make war, because without war it would have to drop its power politics and renege on its mission to seek advantage over other nations, enhancing itself at the expense of others. And so a religion that is in the service of a state is a religion that not only accepts war but prays for victory. (25-26)

That was a passage which particularly stood out to me; it sets the tone for the entire book. Kurlansky seeks to delineate the history of nonviolence (through examples from religious teachings to individual dissenters – from the sayings of Chinese sages through those of Jesus, to the actions of MLK and resisters of Soviet rule in Czechoslovakia) in order to show that it can work and that violence should not be uncritically accepted as inevitable. Look, it isn't a flawless work; Kurlansky blows through millennia worth of history in fewer than 200 pages – of course it suffers from lack of depth and development in the areas that it examines. The upside of this approach, however, is that you receive a clear and highly focused overview – more so, perhaps, than you would get had Kurlansky spent the arguably required 800 pages on the topic. Even if in places the discussion isn't as elaborate as one might like, the book has power through its concentrated effort. It also, I have to admit, exposed some areas of history about which I either possessed little knowledge, or which I had never realized went quite like that. History is never objective – I think this lesson can be added to the 25 that Kurlansky draws from his survey of the history of nonviolence. I've included them, here, if you're interested (to be honest: I mostly added them for myself, to come back to later). The 'lessons' are less powerful on their own; they are more convincing after you have read the book. I think that speaks to the value of Nonviolence in and of itself.

The Twenty-Five Lessons:
1) There is no proactive word for nonviolence.
2) Nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them.
3) Practitioners of nonviolence are seen as enemies of the state.
4) Once a state takes over religion, the religion loses its nonviolent teachings.
5) A rebel can be defanged and co-opted by making him a saint after he is dead.
6) Somewhere behind every war there are always a few founding lies.
7) A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings.
8) People who go to war start to resemble their enemy.
9) A conflict between a violent and nonviolent force is a moral argument. If the violent side can provoke the nonviolent side into violence, then the violent side has won.
10) The problem lies not in the nature of man but in the nature of power.
11) The longer the war lasts, the less popular it becomes.
12) The state imagines it is impotent without a military because it cannot conceive of power without force.
13) It is often not the largest but the best organized and most articulate group that prevails.
14) All debate momentarily ends with an “enforced silence” once the first shots are fired.
15) A shooting war is not necessary to overthrow an established power but is used to consolidate the revolution itself.
16) Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.
17) Warfare produces peace activists. A group of veterans is a likely place to find peace activists.
18) People motivated by fear do not act well.
19) While it is perfectly feasible to convince a people faced with brutal repression to rise up in a suicidal attack on their oppressor, it is almost impossible to convince them to meet deadly violence with nonviolent resistance.
20) Wars do not have to be sold to the general public if they can be carried out by an all volunteer professional military.
21) Once you start the business of killing, you just get “deeper and deeper,” without limits.
22) Violence always comes with a supposedly rational explanation – which is only dismissed as irrational if the violence fails.
23) Violence is a virus that infects and takes over.
24) The miracle is that despite all of society’s promotion of warfare, most soldiers find warfare to be a wrenching departure from their own moral values.
25) The hard work of beginning a movement to end war had already been done.

As I waited for our '03 Honda Civic to get serviced today, I finished reading, Nonviolence: The History of A Dangerous Idea by Mark Kurlansky. And, I must say that this is a great read! I love reading history, so maybe it's just me, but I really enjoyed this book. Kurlansky is accessible and does a good job of representing the history of nonviolence throughout history. The book is fairly short, so he does not go into too much detail but enough to entice the imagination of those that dream of a way of life without violence. I would recommend this to just about anyone simply because the side of history of told here is often not heard. This book is actually a history of violence rather than nonviolence. Kurlansky tells the other side of that history; of those that were opposed to and withstood violence throughout recorded time. But the violence seems ever present unfortunately. But those I would recommend this to the most would be my fellow Christians. A decent amount of ink is used on telling another side of the history of the Church. It is inspiring and frustrating. But it ultimately gave me hope that those of us that follow Jesus today yet don't agree with the Christendom machine are not alone. Pick it up.

Kurlansky's work is passionate and thought provoking, but sets up and knocks down a number of straw persons. He also comes dangerously close to suggesting that the Holocaust was as much the fault of those who resisted the Nazis as the Nazis themselves.

This is a book that I believe should be required reading in all American high schools. It would definitely give a new perspective on the purposes of war.

It is a brilliant study of nonviolence towards political goals. While I do not agree with every one of the below statements, his argument and development of these "rules"(my term, not the authors) is detailed and contains both well known and not well known examples. There are not enough historical analysis of Nonviolence as a political strategy written by a historian rather than an activist. While the author's bias is obvious he sells this method of political change as the only lasting and efficient method of change. When a group is given the option of violent or nonviolent action against a violent state both will likely result in death/violence against the subjugated group. The nonviolent option however will likely result in less death/violence against the subjugated group, and only the nonviolent option will result in any lasting success. It only takes a few students to get shot at a protest to have an enormous impact world-wide, but if those same students were planting bombs their deaths are just seen as casualties. I also appreciate his distinction between nonviolence and passivity which is neccessary to understand if you are going to take nonviolence as a serious strategy.

These are taken from Mark Kurlansky (2007) Nonviolence: The history of a dangerous idea. London: Vintage.

1 There is no proactive word for nonviolence.

2 Nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them.

3 Practitioners of nonviolence are seen as enemies of the state.

4 Once a state takes over a religion, the religion loses its non-violent teachings.

5 A rebel can be defanged and co-opted by making him a saint after he is dead.

6 Somewhere behind every war there are always a few founding lies.

7 A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings.

8 People who go to war start to resemble their enemy.

9 A conflict between a violent force and a nonviolent force is a moral argument.
If the violent side can provoke the nonviolent side into violence, the violent side has won.

10 The problem lies not in the nature of man but in the nature of power.

11 The longer a war lasts, the less popular it becomes.

12 The state imagines it is impotent without a military because it cannot conceive of power
without force.

13 It is often not the largest but the best organized and most articulate group that wins.

14 All debate momentarily ends with an “enforced silence” once the first shots are fired.

15 A shooting war is not necessary to overthrow an established power but is used to
consolidate the revolution itself.

16 Violence does not resolve. It always leads to more violence.

17 Warfare produces peace activists. A group of veterans is a likely place to find peace
activists.

18 People motivated by fear do not act well.

19 While it is perfectly feasible to convince a people faced with brutal repression to rise up in
a suicidal attack on their oppressor, it is almost impossible to convince them to meet deadly
violence with nonviolent resistance.

20 Wars do not have to be sold to the general public if they can be carried out by an
all-volunteer professional military.

21 Once you start the business of killing, you just get “deeper and deeper”, without limits.

22 Violence always comes with a supposedly rational explanation – which is only dismissed
as irrational if the violence fails.

23 Violence is a virus that infects and takes over.

24 The miracle is that despite all of society’s promotion of warfare, most soldiers find
warfare to be a wrenching departure from their own moral values.

25 The hard work of beginning a movement to end war has already been done.

This is a small book with a huge scope, giving an excellent overview of both Eastern and Western war and nonviolence throughout history. It is designed for general audiences, and gets its intended job done well. I came away hungry for more depth and nuance. That's not a criticism; I credit the book for leaving me thinking and wanting to learn more. It serves as a great starting point, much like a Wikipedia article...and as with Wikipedia, academic folks may want to fact-check and research further. There's a good bibliography that allows for this.

The book draws an important distinction between passive pacifism and nonviolent activism; the author laments that the word nonviolence itself is a passive construction /that there is no widely accepted active verb for resisting without violent force. Thus, even our language is shaped with a predisposition to violence. This discussion anticipated my objection: that it is wrong to stand aside when life and freedom are threatened. The author agrees, and argues that nonviolence is far more effective than war, which for centuries has compounded oppression.

While I have often thought of nonviolence in idealistic terms, Kurlansky emphasizes the pragmatic effort of nonviolent leaders. I was impressed with his claim that nonviolence requires more creativity than lashing out violetly. An effective nonviolent protest demands thoughtful and organized solutions to complex problems. Nonviolent activists must be unwaveringly courageous because one lapse into violence can jeopardize the moral high ground and validate the enemy. Still, the book avoids idolizing or sanitizing nonviolent movements, noting that martyrs are easily dismissed or used as incendiary propaganda to promote warfare.

Kurlansky challenged many of my perceptions of the historic events discussed, leading me to consider how propaganda may have influenced my thinking about wars of the past. I rarely think of propaganda as retrospective, but it makes sense that our perception of the past impacts our responses to current events. Most challenging was that it was difficult for me not to see criticisms of violent methods as criticisms of the just causes themselves, I am so used to just war arguments. Here, I think more nuanced deep dives would help me to unpack my more conventional understanding of military history, whereas Kurlansky is a bit blunt in the interest of being both concise and convicted.

A provoking, influential read. Definitely reccomended. I am, if not fully persuaded, extremely curious.

I haven’t been as disappointed this much in a “history” book since Zinn’s “A Peoples History of the United States.” Understanding that all books have a bias, this book really feels like propaganda. Like Zinn, the book only provides a bibliography instead of footnotes, so it is hard to find the source of some pretty bizarre conclusions.
For instance, he ignores the modern translation of the commandment “You shall not murder” and uses the old translation “You shall not kill” as a foundation for his insistence that the Old Testament God disapproved of killing of people in all forms. Kurlansky must have skimmed the OT - God -approved killing is rampant. Peter Craigie’s “The Problem of War in the Old Testament” is a good book that deals with the modern ethical problems with this violent God.

Another example is his use of a death estimate of 100,000 – 130,000 from the fire bombing of Dresden, instead of the the 25,000-35,000 estimate used by most sources. Why does he use the higher, less trustworthy figure, a number used by (among others) holocaust deniers? (I just had to us this cheap trick of association that Zinn used throughout his book). Still a bad number, but another sign this book is poorly sourced.

The book has some great points, the most historically supported being “People who go to war start to resemble their enemy.” However, the vague sources and questionable interpretations of history limit the effectiveness of this book. There is a running theme throughout that humankind can progress to a higher level where nonviolence is universally possible. I don’t think his survey of history supports this argument however.

Just a remarkably insightful book on the theological underpinnings of non-violence, how quickly they dare subsumed by state-power interests, but also how the durable-but-forgotten nonviolent minority keeps the lamp lit to show us another way.

As recommended at https://twitter.com/axolotolh/status/...

A very interesting history of non-violence, from ancient times to the present. Kurlansky presents some provocative ideas questioning the wisdom of war, any war, throughout history, including the saintly "Good War" of World War II and the American Civil War. He uses alot of examples, (such as Gandhi's campaign in India) to suggest that non-violence is more effective than armed struggle. He points out that in the Middle East, violence hasn't worked, isn't working and probably won't ever work. One thing keeping this first printing from being five stars were several typos and errors of simple fact, (e.g., women did not get the vote in the U.S. in 1929, it was 1920, and William McKinley did not give a speech in 1903 explaining why a war to "liberate" the Philippines from Spanish rule led to their annexation by the United States because he died in 1901. There are other errors like that, but it's still a great book.