The Complete Idiot's Guide to Your Military and Veterans Benefits Book

Fascinating. The author goes beyond the usual clichés (boastful or condemning, depending on the writer's view, but in both cases too simplistic) about how savage and bloodthirsty we are as a species. He digs into history, sociology, anthropology, modern psychology, and brain science to look at the evidence for and against homo sapiens as 'the killer ape'.

Smith finds a lot of theoretical structure and supporting data to indicate that on one hand, our species is highly predatory toward others, and often within itself. That much is obvious from any history book or newspaper. But he also points out considerable evidence that almost all human beings have a hard time killing other people, or even other creatures that resemble us in key ways.

Getting most people to kill others takes considerable cultural and military training convincing them that 'the enemy' are not really human but are some hostile other species, usually predatory or parasitic, and conditioning them to kill too quickly to have time to mull it over first. Often the aftermath, once they do have time to think, haunts them lifelong, as in the case of the PTSD many veterans and police officers feel after having to kill people in the line of duty. It's interesting to read this, and juxtapose it with Kevin Dutton's 'The Wisdom of Psychopaths', in which that author concludes that our society (globally, not in any one country) is becoming more psychopathic, but less violent toward one another.

Highly recommended for anyone interested in psychology, history, sociology, or anthropology.