Overview

War presents the most degraded moral environment humanity creates. It is an arena where individuality is subsumed in collective violence and humanity is obscured as a faceless, merciless enemy pitted against its reflection in an elemental struggle for survival.A barbaric logic has guided the conduct of war throughout history. Yet as Cathal Nolan reveals in this gripping, poignant, and powerful book, even as war can obliterate hope and decency at the grand level it simultaneously produces conditions that permit astonishing exceptions of mercy and shared dignity. Pulling the trigger is usually both the expedient thing and required by war's grim and remorseless calculus. Yet somehow the trigger is not always pulled. A different choice is made. Restraint triumphs. Humanity is rediscovered and honored in a flash of recognition.This book gathers and explores acts of singular mercy, giving them form and substanceDLacross wars, causes, and opposing uniforms. These acts demand our attention not only for the moral uplift they supply but because they challenge assumptions about humanity itself. Rising above ordinary courage, they may ultimately transcend our understanding, entering the realm of the ineffable. Nevertheless, as Nolan shows, acts of mercy in war are not the provenance of saints but of ordinary men and women who perform them at great personal risk. As much or more than the normal war hero stories, we must recognize the extraordinary courage of the merciful in war.Mercy is an exceptional book about exceptions, challenging myths and heroic fabrications, refuting claims to exclusive moral virtue. It reminds us that decency in warfare is also universal, offering a haunting and compellingly humane counternarrative to war's usual inhumane logic.

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9780190077280

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Reviews

A compelling work of both history and moral thought, told with compassion and rich detail. Mercy will challenge every reader's view of war. * Tom Nichols, Professor Emeritus, Naval War College * Nolan's beautifully written new book shows the power of mercy and humanity in the midst of the brutalities of modern warfare from WWI to the present. Disturbing and uplifting at the same time, Mercy leaves no reader untouched. * Gerald J. Steinacher, author of Humanitarians at War *

"Mercy can help bring leaders to the negotiating table. So, too, can it help win over local populations and freeze out regional enemies in 'unwinnable' wars of occupation, something Nolan slams the West for failing to do sufficiently in Afghanistan. Above all, his book is an argument for violence that is restrained, measured, and proportionate to the cause. 'Make your forces merciful arguments for and not against that cause,' he writes. 'Act indecently and you will surely lose.' * The Past.com * Cathal J. Nolan's splendid new book reminds us that wars, like the one still raging in Ukraine, reveal humanity both ""at its most exposed and inhumane but sometimes also its most remarkably merciful. ""From conflicts around the world, Nolan retrieves moving examples of soldiers not just sparing their enemies but sometimes risking their own lives on behalf of those who, moments before, were trying to kill them. Even under military discipline, soldiers sometimes disobey orders, arrange truces, and even desert their armies for the sake of healing the wounded, protecting the unarmed, and limiting bloodshed. * Currentpub.com * In Mercy: Humanity in War, historian Cathal J. Nolan takes another approach to finding heroes in war who do not fight — or at least those who find themselves in battle and choose to not kill, to save lives, to risk their own lives to help others or to try to simply do less harm. Where the pacifists were driven by absolute moral clarity, there's nothing clear about the stories Nolan tells. Each is situated inside the hell of armed conflict, with acts of mercy shrouded in smoke, blood and horror, a 'dehumanizing cacophony of the calamity that is war.' Still, Nolan convincingly argues, 'mercy is a truer mark of heroic character in war,"" because ""the essence of genuine heroism is to choose and act rightly.' * The Washington Post * A compelling work of both history and moral thought, told with compassion and rich detail. Mercy will challenge every reader's view of war. * Tom Nichols, Professor Emeritus, Naval War College * Nolan's beautifully written new book shows the power of mercy and humanity in the midst of the brutalities of modern warfare from WWI to the present. Disturbing and uplifting at the same time, Mercy leaves no reader untouched. * Gerald J. Steinacher, author of Humanitarians at War * Most histories of war write of—even revel in— its detached cruelty and violence. This brilliant book does just the opposite: focusing on those men and women who treated their adversaries as people. Mercy is a one-of-kind journey out of the heart of darkness and into the realm of the human soul at its most sublime. Be forewarned, though: reading this book is an emotional experience. I cried more than a few times. * Rob Citino, Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian, The National World War II Museum *"

A compelling work of both history and moral thought, told with compassion and rich detail. Mercy will challenge every reader's view of war. * Tom Nichols, Professor Emeritus, Naval War College * Nolan's beautifully written new book shows the power of mercy and humanity in the midst of the brutalities of modern warfare from WWI to the present. Disturbing and uplifting at the same time, Mercy leaves no reader untouched. * Gerald J. Steinacher, author of Humanitarians at War * Most histories of war write of-even revel in- its detached cruelty and violence. This brilliant book does just the opposite: focusing on those men and women who treated their adversaries as people. Mercy is a one-of-kind journey out of the heart of darkness and into the realm of the human soul at its most sublime. Be forewarned, though: reading this book is an emotional experience. I cried more than a few times. * Rob Citino, Samuel Zemurray Stone Senior Historian, The National World War II Museum *

Author Information

Cathal J. Nolan is the author of The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost, for which he received both the Gilder Lehrman Prize in Military History and the first Distinguished Book Award from War on the Rocks. Nolan's other works include a two-volume Concise History of World War II; Wars of the Age of Louis XIV; a two-volume study of The Age of the Wars of Religion; a study of Principled Diplomacy, and several edited books in ethics in international affairs and international and military history. He is Professor of History at Boston University, a Progress Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and a Fellow of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

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