The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience

by Michael Ignatieff

Overview

Since the early 1990s, Michael Ignatieff has traveled the world's war zones, from Bosnia to the West Bank, from Afghanistan to central Africa. The Warrior's Honor is a report and a reflection on what he has seen in the places where ethnic war has become a way of life. Ignatieff charts the rise of the new moral interventionists—the relief workers, reporters, delegates, and diplomats who believe that other people's misery is of concern to us all. And he brings us face-to-face with the new ethnic warriors—the warlords, gunmen, and paramilitaries—who have escalated postmodern war to an unprecedented level of savagery. Hard-hitting and passionate, The Warrior's Honor is a profound and searching exploration of the perils and obligations of moral citizenship in a world scarred by war and genocide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805055191
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	10/15/1998
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Michael Ignatieff is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, among other publications and the author of many acclaimed books including Blood and Belonging, Isaiah Berlin, The Warrior's Honor, The Russian Album, The Needs of Strangers, and Virtual War. He lives in London and Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Editorial Reviews

*A moving and superb discussion of the dilemmas of modern humanitarianism amidst modern cruelty.” —William Shawcross

“A splid and beautifully written book. Honest, lucid, subtle, full of important information.” —Conor Cruise O'Brien

“Compelling and penetrating.” —The Boston Globe

“Ignatieff's argument is simple and, to my mind, irresistible.” —Alan Ryan, The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

This collection of Ignatieff's previously published essays conveys through meticulous reporting the moral enigmas of current warfare. Each of the five essays poses a core dilemma: How has television's 'promiscuous' gaze promoted both moral universalism and 'generalized misanthropy?' How does Freud's idea of the 'narcissism of minor difference' play itself out among the perpetrators of Bosnia's ethnic cleansing? Why does 'moral disgust' in our reaction to Africa's killing fields deflect Western states from an effective response? The book's title comes from an essay about the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross to blunt the slaughter of Afghan innocents in appeals to 'warrior's honor.' Ignatieff (Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism) calls for the creation of a 'saving distance' between myths of historical violence and the imperatives of present life. He is not optimistic, but serious readers will not flinch from these durable and troubling essays. -- Zachary T. Irwin, Pennsylvania State Erie, Pennsylvania

Library Journal