Rethinking Peace
  • 1994/380 pages

Rethinking Peace

Robert Elias and Jennifer Turpin, editors
Paperback: $22.50
ISBN: 978-1-55587-488-9
With the development of the atomic bomb, Albert Einstein remarked that everything had changed except our thinking about the world. Einstein and Bertrand Russell warned us that "we have to learn to think in a new way. . . . shall we put an end to the human race; or shall we renounce war?"

Unfortunately, we are facing the end of this century still in the midst of wars of various motivations. In response, the editors of Rethinking Peace have compiled a collection of essays designed to encourage readers to think differently about the world and the prospects for peace. Based on rigorous scholarly work, these essays nevertheless have been written to be read by students—to make important points in a short space, and in plain English.

With an emphasis on new thinking and positive strategies for developing a more peaceful world, the authors explore why conventional politics and generations of peace movements have not quelled our fascination with militarism; how we got to where we are now; the kind of thinking that keeps leading us to war; and how we can fundamentally change our thinking so that a peaceful future is more than simply a pipedream.

The forty-five articles—fresh, timely, diverse, and controversial—are sure to provoke meaningful discussion and debate.

Robert Elias is professor of politics and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies and Legal Studies programs at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Victims of the System, coeditor of The Peace Resource Book, and coauthor (with Jennifer Turpin) of Americans At Home Abroad. He is also editor of the journal Peace Review. Jennifer Turpin is associate professor of sociology and chair of Women's Studies at the University of San Francisco. In addition to Americans At Home Abroad, her publications include Reinventing the Soviet Self and The Web of Violence: From Interpersonal to Global (coedited).