B6 EZ BD THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, MAY 29 , 2022
Washington Post
H ardcover Bestsellers
COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN
BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATIONFICTION1 THIS TIME TOMORROW (Riverhead, $28).
By Emma Straub. A woman falls asleep on
the eve of her 40th birthday, and wakes to
find herself 16 again.2 SEA OF TRANQUILITY (Knopf, $25). By
Emily St. John Mandel. The author of
“Station Eleven” and “The Glass Hotel”
explores the psychological implications of
time travel for characters from different
centuries.3 TIME IS A MOTHER (Penguin Press, $24). By
Ocean Vuong. Poems about living through
grief from the award-winning poet and
novelist.4 LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY (Doubleday, $29).
By Bonnie Garmus. A mid-century scientist
becomes a sensation while hosting a
feminist cooking show.5 THE PARIS APARTMENT (Morrow, $28.99).
By Lucy Foley. A woman investigating her
brother’s disappearance suspects that his
neighbors might have been involved.6 TRUST (Riverhead, $28). By Hernan Diaz. An
excessively wealthy family with a secret is
the catalyst for examining how stories can
shape the truth.7 THE CANDY HOUSE (Scribner, $28). By
Jennifer Egan. A sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-
winning “A Visit Fr om the Goon Squad”
continues the story of tech mogul Bix
Bouton.8 BOOK OF NIGHT (Tor, $27.99). By Holly
Black. A woman stumbles across a mangled
corpse while being watched by a man with
shadows where his hands should be.9 THE LINCOLN HIGHWAY (Viking, $30). By
Amor Towles. Four boys on a road trip take
an unplanned journey.10 THE MIDNIGHT LIBRARY (Viking, $26). By
Matt Haig. A regretful woman lands in a
library where she gets to play out her life had
she made different choices.NONFICTION1 RIVER OF THE GODS (Doubleday, $32.50).
By Candice Millard. A chronicle of the search
for the head of the Nile river by two 19th-
century British explorers and their African
guide.2 ATLAS OF THE HEART (Random House,
$30). By Brené Brown. An exploration of 87
emotions to help people make more
meaningful connections.3 CRYING IN H MART (Knopf, $26.95). By
Michelle Zauner. A Korean American indie-
rock star chronicles her relationship with her
late mother and their shared culture.4 THE BOY, THE MOLE, THE FOX AND THE
HORSE (HarperOne, $22.99). By Charlie
Mackesy. The British illustrator brings to life
fables about unlikely friendships.5 ATOMIC HABITS (Avery, $27). By James
Clear. How to make small changes that have
a big impact.6 FINDING ME (HarperOne, $28.99). By Viola
Davis. The award-winning actor and
producer describes overcoming dire
challenges in her upbringing, allowing her to
find her life’s purpose.7 MEAN BABY (Knopf, $30). By Selma Blair.
The actress shares stories from her
upbringing, her Hollywood career and her
life with multiple sclerosis.8 BITTERSWEET (Crown, $28). By Susan Cain.
The author of “Quiet” considers the role of
melancholy in a resolutely upbeat society.9 THIS WILL NOT PASS (Simon & Schuster,
$29.99). By Jonathan Martin and Alexander
Burns. Two reporters chronicle the
tumultuous 2020 election and the discord
during the first year of the Biden presidency.10 THE 1619 PROJECT (One World, $38). By
Nikole Hannah-Jones and the New York
Times Magazine. Essays contextualize the
history of slavery as part of the founding of
the United States.Rankings reflect sales for the week ended May 22. The charts may
not be reproduced without permission from the American
Booksellers Association, the trade association for independent
bookstores in the United States, and indiebound.org. Copyright
2022 American Booksellers Association. (The bestseller lists
alternate between hardcover and paperback each week.) Bestsellers at washingtonpost.com/books31 TUESDAY | 7 P.M. Lyla Lee discusses “Flip the
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discuss “Questions from Outer Space” and “A Camera
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For more literary events, go to wapo.st/literarycalLITERARY CALENDARMay 31 - June 4Book WorldWHY WE FIGHT
The Roots of
War and the
Paths to Peace
By Christopher
Blattman
Viking.
388 pp. $32ty, and one could argue that Russia risks
irrelevance as its population ages and its
economy stagnates. Finally, there seems little
doubt that Putin misperceived a great deal
about the security environment, most impor-
tant the willingness of the Ukrainians to fight
and the eagerness of Western nations to help
them, even upending such taboos as Ger-
many’s decades-old unwillingness to provide
lethal weapons to belligerents.
Blatmann’s five categories are sufficiently
general and fungible that they can be
stretched to fit a wide variety of contexts,
from civil conflict in Liberia to gang violence
in Chicago to, as we have just seen, the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. That very
strength risks becoming a vulnerability if
readers and policymakers try too hard to
make the model fit every situation.
The historical record, of course, is not so
neat or formulaic. The great value of this
thoughtful and well-written book is therefore
not so much in providing a c hecklist as a set of
warnings. Blattman uses the metaphor of a
pilot. When the skies are clear and the plane is
at the proper altitude, we need not worry
about the safety of the passengers on board.
But when the pilot is navigating a canyon or
flying through bad weather, the risks of
disaster increase. The challenge is to create
systems at t he local, national and internation-
al levels that create safer skies.
Blattman wants his readers to become
comfortable with small, incremental gains
toward peace, because peace is ultimately
what most groups seek. Given the prevalence
of his five causal factors over time, we cannot
expect global peace to break out suddenly or
history to end anytime soon. We should also
look to create interdependence between soci-
eties, foster checks and balances in govern-
mental decision-making on war, and support
third-party interventions designed to prevent
small problems from growing. This book,
written informally as a conversation between
reader and author, provides a clear, concise
way of thinking about h uman conflict, even as
Putin’s war reminds us of the persistence of
the problem. Blattman quotes former Israeli
prime minister Shimon Peres’s famous dic-
tum: “The good news is that there is a light at
the end of the tunnel. The bad news is that
there is no tunnel.”for bargaining, especially if members of a
group identify closely with the people per-
ceived as being offended.
Third, wars can begin from uncertainty,
especially when one side grows overconfident
in the material or moral advantages it be-
lieves it has over an opponent. The two sides
in conflict, moreover, do not share the same
information, nor do they interpret and use
their information in the same way.
Fourth, Blattman argues, is a group’s deci-
sion to use violence to solve a problem before
the group grows too weak (or its opponent
grows too strong) to prevail. He cites the
example of the George W. Bush administra-
tion’s belief that it needed to strike Saddam
Hussein in 2003 before Iraq’s development of
weapons of mass destruction vastly increased
the costs of a future war to the United States.
Or, to cite another famous example, Sparta
fought the Peloponnesian War against Athens
before the latter’s rise placed the former in a
state of near-permanent inferiority.
Finally, Blattman takes a cue from the late
Robert Jervis, who argued that mispercep-
tions are a key cause of war. One side can
misjudge its (or its opponent’s) strength, the
potential response of the international com-
munity, the courage of an enemy’s leaders, or
the willingness of one’s own people to sacri-
fice for victory. This factor becomes even
more problematic because each side has an
incentive to increase misperception in the
other through deception, bluster and bluff.
On the surface, Blattman seems to have
found Putin’s playbook. Isolated in the Krem-
lin, he faced few checks and balances on his
decision to invade Ukraine and his subse-
quent decisions to seek a continuation of the
violence rather than negotiate a way out of the
war. His speeches are filled with calls to
intangible incentives based in a distorted
reading of history that emphasizes Russia’s
sense of national mission and its alleged
humiliation at the hands of the West. Launch-
ing this war involved tremendous uncertain-W
hen he wrote “Why We Fight: The
Roots of War and the Paths to Peace,”
economist Christopher Blattman
could not have known that Russian President
Vladimir Putin would soon invade Ukraine,
setting off the deadliest war in Europe since
- Putin’s war also created exactly the kind
of natural experiment that social scientists
like Blattman seek. We therefore have an
opportunity to test whether Blattman’s thesis
helps us to understand why Putin started
such a reckless war and whether the thesis
suggests routes toward a lasting peace.
Blattman is interested in more than large
interstate wars. He wants to understand why
any group of humans engages in sustained,
organized violence when the costs are so high.
He argues that most groups settle their
differences without violence or, as he neatly
puts it, they choose “to loathe one another in
peace.” Just as two litigants in a messy court
case will accept a plea bargain to avoid the
costs of a lengthy trial, so will street gangs,
insurgents and governments usually look for
ways to cut a deal rather than risk destruc-
tion. This bias toward peace fails, Blattman
argues, when some toxic mixture of five
conditions prevails. The context produced by
these conditions, not resource scarcity, pover-
ty or any of the usually cited causes for war,
explain “why we fight.”
How well does this model explain the
Russian invasion of Ukraine? First, Blattman
argues, wars occur when leaders have un-
checked interests, encouraging them to take
their groups into wars or prolonged conflicts
because their personal risk-reward calculus
differs from the group’s. The critical variable
for Blattman is the efficiency of the system of
checks and balances operating in a society,
not necessarily its level of democracy or
autocracy.
Second, conflict can begin when intangible
incentives like honor, vengeance or a sense of
injustice overwhelm the bias for peace. Ideol-
ogy, glory and outrage can narrow the space
An incremental way to
peace despite Putin and
the persistence of war
WARFARE REVIEW BY MICHAEL S. NEIBERG
KASIA STREK FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTA border guard
near Chernihiv,
Ukraine, works
May 17 outside
his base, which
was attacked by
Russian forces.Michael S. Neiberg is chair of War Studies and
professor of history at the US Army War College. He
is the author, most recently, of “When Fr ance Fell:
The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American
Alliance.”