Rating: 
Summary: Man: Killer Angel or Posturing Phony?
Review: On Killing, is in the top 10 books one must have to understand the world today--its importance is based on the realization of man's duality--he is indeed a killer and an angel. The book by this name, by Mark Schaara is highly recommended as Col Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain considered the paradox during the Civil War 1861-65. This paradox is also at the heart of why some oppose what LTC Grossman has stated. Those that are angered by the reality that man is part being that wants to live in peace and doesn't want to shoot----love war and its illusions of proving manhood/self-worth far too much and have not dug deep enough into their own hearts. Those that are relieved from the guilt of killing need to be more shrewd because if we do not learn to kill better in the world we live in, there are "killers" without any consciences at all who will destroy everything that is good. But this is the black/white duality that most people reflect on when they read this book-------- ...the thing that is most amazing about his book is it proves there is also another gray duality--a far more sinister one than kill (Fight) or not to kill (Surrender). And this is the other 2 options available in a fight---to posture or to flee. Of these, POSTURING is the most deadly. At the technotactical level of war, its the Soldier or marine firing wildly on full automatic or 3 round burst without aiming....or just firing to be seen as following orders as a good robot. Sometimes the noise and yelling (SLAM's cross-talking) can bluff the enemy into surrender--especially if you reach his trenchline or are already in his rear areas (maneuverism). Martin van Crevald writes of why weapons are painted and given "shark's teeth" in Technology and War---to sometimes scare an enemy into giving up because actual war fighting is too costly. This is a very good thing as Sun Tzu concludes in The Art of War--to a point. In the early age of gunpowder sieges, could be decided by engineers like Vauban determining the number of days bombardment a walled city could endure, sending a written memo to the fort and negotiating a surrender without bloodshed. But posturing is held up by the few actual fighting Soldiers who get up, advance against enemy fire and hit/kill the enemy with their fire and grenades. Or in the case of the siege, the number of actual artillery pieces that can damage the city's walls. The danger is that a force based on just loud-posturing will be detached from yielding tangible killing effects on the battlefield (believing their own recruiting slogans and distorted histories written by biased staff historians who want to stay employed) and when faced with the actual killing fire of the enemy does not gain fire superiority but is pinned down. In other words for posturing to work, the threat has to be real--if the enemy finds out you are incapable of actually fighting; your entire society is at risk. Posturing taken to the Geostrategic level---the macro scale---is clearly evident with LTC Grossman's distance-to-killing graph---the farther away you are the easier it is to use a weapon to kill. If we become a nation of posturers unwilling to put men on the ground effectively; we end up with stand-off aircraft strikes with token landing parties off-shore in surface ships as a form of Geostrategic posturing--to make a lot of noise, not actually kill or destroy the enemy but far too often lots of civilians and landscape. In fact, this is exactly what has taken place in the aftermath of WWII's heavy casualties from ground combat against automatic weapons fire. The U.S. had decided to be neither angel nor killer but to become a geostrategic posturer, and this "bluff" has been called on us already in Korea and Vietnam. In the former, we stood firm, in the later we "cut and run" because when our air/sea supremacy was faced with the onslaught of NVA ground troops in 1975, we had nothing on the ground to stop them. Whereas our politicians may want multi-billion dollar geostrategic posturing via low-risk airstrikes from robot planes and marines in handfuls (built-in excuse not to have to fight) off-shore waving flags ready to evacuate citizens if their posturing fails, it leaves the U.S. in a dangerous position without an actual war-winning U.S. Army properly resourced to win the close fight where the resistance to killing is greatest (especially among the West where we value human life) but can be done with least cost to the civilians and countryside. The enemies out there do not share our high values of human life. LTC Grossman describes the lack of morality inherent in developing stand-off war forms but doesn't quite connect the implications of what he has proven all the way to the national level. Its not just that being able to bomb at 15,000 feet gives civilian leaders "itchy fingers" or that watching murder on TV or on a videogame vicariously makes the populace desensitized and more likely to go "postal". The real danger is that the safety mechanisms of our society--the police and the military will be unable to do their jobs because they were sabotaged by make-believe posturing policies and budgetary decisions of those in love with push-button, video game warfare. Wasting billions on pseudo-weapons with greater and greater stand-off ranges because we are most comfortable psychologically with them prevents the military/police from protecting us from enemies internally and externally UP CLOSE. The term today is "asymmetric warfare"; an enemy pitting his strength at our weakness. This is what makes POSTURING so dangerous....
Rating:
Summary: Flawed Masterpiece
Review: I think this book is flawed, but at the same time I recommend it highly to military historians and the general reader. Why is it flawed? I find the 'science' of the book excessively reductionist. Although the answers are there, often Grossman ignores or avoids them, preferring to emphasise a simplistic notion of what he is trying to say. For instance, he states in several places that man has in innate aversion to killing his own species, yet apparently man can overcome this aversion quite easily if his enemy is fleeing, or helpless. It seems odd that this 'aversion' has its maximum force when the enemy has at least as good a chance of killing you, as you have of killing him! Elsewhere, Grossman does describe the psychological shock of combat yet fails (to me) to make the obvious deduction. He also emphasises the influence 'psychological distance' has in killers. It seems that Grossman wants at all costs to hold on to his 'innate aversion' theory because he can then bolster his case for 'de-sensitization' of American children by TV. Yet even here he admits that there is a complex of reasons for the phenomenon under discussion. At all points, evidence is anecdotal or derived from other authors. Grossman is also not good on history other than military history - for example, he never questions the motives for American involvement in Vietnam in the first place, while defending the conduct of the war by American military leadership. As an Irishman (with a nodding acquaintance of Celtic mythology) I was astounded to read that 'ancient Celts failed to make the connection between sex and pregnancy'! I would have liked to see the evidence for Grossman's case marshalled more scientifically - for example Dupuy's use of statistics and operations research. It seems to me that there are at least three books in this one - the basic military psychological part, the story of PTS in Vietnam vets and the 'de-sensitization of youth' part. In the end, this is a book about a scienctific subject written for the popular market. It needs considerable tightening up of the science and improvement of the argument before I would have complete faith in the case it is trying to make.
Rating:
Summary: Should be mandatory reading for Police/Military.
Review: I've worked in and around special operations units in both law enforcement and the military for many years. If more of those professionals had read this book there would be less swagger and more study of the conditioning and effects associated with violent professions. This book just became mandatory reading for my students and should be for anyone contemplating the use of deadly force.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing, yet fraught with problems
Review: Grossman presents interesting and worth-while reading when dealing with the psychological workings of what it takes (soldiers) to kill. His hypothesis adding two additional phases to the typcal fight-or-flight response was new, at least to me, and makes sense. And his examination of ritual and rite involved with war, in particular the importance of ritual after war, and his coorelation between the lack of ritual and the high precentage of Vietnam vets who suffe(ed) from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was intriguing and even insightful. Yet the book has significant short-comings. First is Grossman's lack of proper citation, footnotes, and supporting evidence. Time and again Grossman quotes experts or refers to people and studies but never gives the source. Grossman makes the error of assuming that his audience is as familar with this topic as he is. At one point, Grossman tells of a meeting with a mysterious Dr. Narut who reveals assassin training techniques taken right out of A Clockwork Orange, yet Grossman gives no other evidence to support this. These are elemental flaws in scholarship and rhetoric, and are the kinds of things that would not be tolerated in college research writing. The Korean War (or Conflict if you want o be politically correct) is another problem. Grossman explains that during WW II only 15 to 20 percent of soldiers actually fired. By Korea this percentage was 50 to 55 percent, and by Vietnam it was 90 to 95 percent. My dispute is not with Grossman's numbers, but with the fact that aside from this statistic, the Korean War is barely mentioned, and its soldiers are never associated with the problem of PTSD. The other, and most important, problem with the book is Grossman's reasoning behind the increase in violence in today's world, America in particular. Essentially, Grossman blames the media, television violence, Hollywood, and video games. His reasoning is akin to that against violent comic books in the 1950's when they were seen as being responsible for the rise in teenage crime. Grossman argues against the anti-hero of today's movies and against violent monster movies such as Friday the Thirteenth. He argues that violent video games condition teenagers just as military training conditions soldiers. Yet he gives no evidence to support his point of view. He cites not one study or even a magazine article to help him (oddly enough, if he had read King's The Danse Macabre, King's textbook on horror from 1950 to 1980, he would have found at least anticdotal evidence). And while he is trying to make this part of the book the crux of his entire argument, he fails miserably because he displays no knowledge or understanding of contemporary American culture or film history/theory and where such characters as the anti-hero derive from. In effect, Grossman comes off as a Nancy Reagan clone, with a "Just say no!" attitude that offers no real insight into why violence has increased, or how to deal with it. Where Grossman wants to hit the target the most, he misses far wide of the mark.
Rating:
Summary: Must read for public school stakeholders!
Review: As a public school teacher, I have had my hunches and theories surrounding the increasing number of violent incidents taking place on public school campuses in the USA...it wasn't until I saw Dave Grossman on "Oprah", then read the book, that many of my suspicions were confirmed...there is a cancer of violence that threatens to do to this country what was never before achieved by our international adversaries (Hitler, etc.)...and that is the destruction of society as we know it...this book is a must read for school administrators, teachers AND PARENTS CURRENTLY WEARING BLINDERS when it comes to their angels' violent tendencies...many tangible explanations, as well as remedies to the problem are presented. A terribly important read.
Rating:
Summary: Good Information
Review: Based upon the reviews on this page and a recommendation from a friend - I picked up this book and found it discussing an important topic.
Rating:
Summary: Not a nice book.
Review: This is not a book for sunday afternoons and the barbeque. This is a book for brandy, a darkened room, silence, and memories. I read things here I always felt, but never said. I read things best not spoken with the wife, and too hard for the kids. And thats the problem. If it can't be spoken, It can't be fixed. This book should be required reading.
Rating:
Summary: Training to Kill
Review: In his work, LTC Grossman discusses the patterns and events that people go through - prior to killing someone. His main focus in his book is on the soldier. Grossman also discusses the ideas of flight and flight - and expands upon our current beliefs of that phenomenon. What is the most shocking about this book is that we as a society are training our youngsters to become programmed killers. Our video games and violent movies teach kids to be numb to the violence and emotions that arise from killing. Grossman does an excellent job in breaking down the levels of killing and discussing the post-stress that an individual will/could experience. I recommend this book to any law enforcement officer/soldier/social workers and othes who deal with crisis situations.
Rating:
Summary: Pardigm altering
Review: This may be the most significant book I've ever read on the relationship between homicide, environmental factors, and free agency. Lt. Col Grossman's book is stripped of sentiment and top heavy metaphysics. Instead, he delivers reasoned arguments backed up with very solid scientific and anecdotal evidence. His conclusions cut through a great deal of the bullshit circulating in the press about the homicidal predilictions of human beings - Grossman basically demonstrates that people are born with a very strong aversion to killing. The equally significant conclusion he reaches is that almost anyone can be trained to kill, and to do it in such a way that it literally becomes second nature. His specific analysis of atrocity and "random" gunman is particularly illumianting.
Rating:
Summary: Everybody Should Read This Book
Review: At the request of the author I am posting an edited version of the e-mail message I sent him. Good day, sir. I just wanted to tell you that I was quite impressed by your book. Very rarely do I read a book that changes the way I look at life but your book has had that effect on me. As somebody who has spent a lot of time studying military history nothing I have seen or read described war the way your book has. It will totally change the way I forever view military history. I have never participated in combat (or served in the military for that matter) but your book did a lot to help me understand what these men have gone through. I also found your section on Killing in America very thought provoking. To be honest, I have never given much thought to violent movies or video games. I have always assumed that "good people know its all fake" and reason will triumph but your book did a lot to challenge my assumptions. Not only will it change the way I look at the issue but I think it will change my movie and television viewing habits. I think your book should be mandatory reading for any politician who has any power over their country's military forces. I think both the country and the troops who serve would be better for it. To summarize, it was an excellent book and you should continue your work. Your work is doing a lot to help society understand its soldiers and soldiers to understand themselves.
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