The Award Tally
FictionNonfiction

Wishlist

Saved in this browser only - it isn't synced to your other devices.

Back to the full ranking
The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society Since A.D. 1000 cover

The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society Since A.D. 1000

William H. McNeill

0

awards won

4

score

#2597 of 3,809 books · #856 in History

Shortlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1983).

In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow—banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another—to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the seventeenth century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the twentieth. His central argument is that a commercial transformation of world society in the eleventh century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces as well as to the commands of rulers. Only in our own time, suggests McNeill, are command economies replacing the market control of large-scale human effort.

Buy this book at AmazonAd
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
ISBN-13
9780226160191
Genre
History
Topics
Military historyTechnology and warfareEconomic history

Awards

Other awarded books from William H. McNeill

If you liked The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force and Society Since A.D. 1000, you could also like these

Similar Topics