To say that much has been written on the topic of war seems like a gross understatement. At the time of this writing, a search for 'war' on Amazon.com yields 639,124 results. Tightened to display only non-fiction books on war still yields 183,839. History teachers, no doubt many with heart-felt sincerity, repeat the tired cliche, 'fail to study history and you are doomed to repeat it.' Have none of those in positions of power and influence, those directly or indirectly responsible for the wars being waged as I write, studied history? Have we the people not studied history? They, and we, have. At least versions thereof.

Almost one hundred years ago, WWI was touted as the war to end all wars. It didn't. David Livingstone Smith writes in the preface to The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War, that "almost 200 million human beings, mostly civilians, have died in wars over the last century, and there is no end in sight." Why do we continue? That is the question Smith attempts to answer in The Most Dangerous Animal. He combines two sharply polarized historical views — that war is, behind the layers of artificial civility, our base nature and conversely, that war is a corruption of an otherwise gentle, kind, pure nature — to argue that war is caused by both "forces working in tandem; it is a child of ambivalence, a compromise between two opposing sides of human nature."

As is often the case, perhaps more obviously so for non-fiction than fiction, to understand an author's approach and biases, it is instructive to look at some biographical details. Perhaps it is the controversial nature of his approach, more than his topic or thesis, that compelled Smith to be as transparent, one could almost say defensive, as he is in the preface. Smith, born in New York City and educated partially in London, England, practiced and taught psychoanalytic psychotherapy for some time. After becoming skeptical of psychotherapy in general, he turned to the study of the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology, leading him eventually to the significance of evolutionary biology in the study of human nature. He is currently associate professor of philosophy at the University of New England, where he is also the co-founder and director of the New England Institute for Cognitive Science and Evolutionary Psychology. He is also the author of Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind.

The Most Dangerous Animal is, as he puts it, "unashamedly rooted in an evolutionary biological perspective," and he moves, again in his own words, "promiscuously between disciplines — from psychology, to philosophy, to prehistoric archeology, with forays into anthropology, psychoanalysis, and even microbiology." Aware that some may thus regard him as a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, he counters that "Nature does not respect the artificial boundaries between disciplines carved out by university departments." Fortunately for Smith, not only does his argument absolutely depend upon an interdisciplinary approach, but interdisciplinary studies are increasingly in vogue nowadays. His unashamedly evolutionary biological perspective will no doubt push many religiously conservative readers away. It is his hope, and mine as well, that this book will reach not only an exclusively secular readership, but that even those uneasy with his perspective will follow his argument through to its conclusion.