Books like On Killing by Dave Grossman

Overestimates of violence beg the question: is modern society the most peaceful era? Steven Pinker argues that, through centuries of decline, violence has steadily fallen, revealing humanity’s better angels.

The book begins with the first devastating battlefield use of lethal gas in World War I, and then investigates the stockpiling of biological weapons during World War II and in the decades afterward as well as the inhuman experiments conducted to test their effectiveness. This updated edition includes a new Introduction and a new final chapter exposing frightening developments in recent years, including the black market that emerged in chemical and biological weapons following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the acquisition of these weapons by various Third World states, the attempts of countries such as Iraq to build up arsenals, and the use of these weapons in terrorist attacks.

In this book, clinical psychologist Stephen A. Diamond determines where anger and rage originate and explores whether these powerful passions are - as most people believe - purely negative, pathological, and evil or can be meaningfully redeemed and rechanneled into constructive activity. What is the psychobiological significance of such feelings? And what is the psychological link between anger, rage, violence, evil, and creativity? Drawing on the discoveries of depth psychologists such as Freud, Jung, Adler, Rank, Reich, and Rollo May, as well as the work of other contemporary psychotherapeutic pioneers, Diamond examines these timely yet eternal questions.

This book is written for psychotherapists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and social workers in clinical or forensic practice. Biological foci include concepts about the deep limbic structures of the brain and the biochemistry that inhibits or disinhibits such violence. Psychological patterns include both psychoanalytic constructs and the specific psychological test data from the case studies that support such constructs. Social factors include the behavior of the victim and, in the case of assassination, the political acts that contribute to predatory violence. Dr. Meloy emphasizes the crucial need for mental health professionals to go beyond descriptive diagnoses and find the motivation and meaning of such acts. The professional's causal and purposive formulations about such violent attachments lead to more effective evaluation, treatment, and intervention, and perhaps testimony in subsequent criminal and civil litigation.

On Combat explores how the human body and brain respond to the extreme stresses of battle, offering research‑based strategies for warriors to manage stress, fear, and injury and to recover with resilience.