10 Powerful Books About Peace

Peace in the Age of Chaos – Steve Killelea

Peace in an Age of Chaos offers a new way of conceptualising how to create a peaceful world among books about peace from Steve Killelea, creator of the Global Peace Index and founder of world-renowned think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace.

The major challenges facing humanity are global in nature: climate change, ever-decreasing biodiversity, full use of the fresh water on the planet, to name a few. Unless the world is basically peaceful, we will never get the trust, cooperation and inclusiveness to solve these issues, yet what creates peace is poorly understood.

Working on an aid program in one of the most violent places in the world, North East Kivu in the DR Congo, philanthropist and business leader Steve Killelea asked himself, What are the most peaceful nations? Unable to find an answer, he created the world’s leading measure of peace, the Global Peace Index, which receives over 16 billion media impressions annually and has become the definitive go-to index for heads of state.

Steve Killelea then went on to establish world-renowned think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace. Today its work is used by organisations such as the World Bank, United Nations and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and taught in thousands of university courses around the world. An interesting read among books about peace.

Making Peace Last – Robert Ricigliano

The international community invests billions annually in thousands of projects designed to overcome poverty, stop violence, spread human rights, fight terrorism and combat global warming. The hope is that these separate projects will ‘add up’ to lasting societal change in places like Afghanistan. In reality, these initiatives are not adding up to sustainable peace. Making Peace Last offers ways of improving the productivity of peacebuilding.

This book defines the theory, analysis and practice needed to create peacebuilding approaches that are as dynamic and adaptive as the societies they are trying to affect. The book is based on a combination of field experience and research into peacebuilding and conflict resolution. This book can also be used as a textbook in courses on peace-building, security and development. Making Peace Last is a comprehensive approach to finding sustainable solutions to the world’s most pressing social problems among books about peace.

World Peace – Alex J. Bellamy

For as long as there has been war, there have been demands for its elimination. The quest for world peace has excited and eluded political leaders, philosophers, religious elders, activists, and artists for millennia. With war on the rise once again, we rarely reflect on what world peace might look like; much less on how it might be achieved. A must-read among books about peace.

Peace: A World History – Antony Adolf

A beautiful one among books about peace. How peace has been made and maintained, experienced and imagined is not only a matter of historical interest, but also of pressing concern. A World History is the first study to explore the full spectrum of peace and peacemaking from prehistoric to contemporary times in a single volume aimed at improving their prospects. By focusing on key periods, events, people, ideas and texts, Antony Adolf shows how the inspiring possibilities and pragmatic limits of peace and peacemaking were shaped by their cultural contexts and, in turn, shaped local and global histories. Diplomatic, pacifist, legal, transformative non-violent and anti-war movements are just a few prominent examples.

Proposed and performed in socio-economic, political, religious, philosophical and other ways, Adolf’s presentation of the diversity of peace and peacemaking challenges the notions that peace is solely the absence of war, that this negation is the only task of peacemakers, and that history is exclusively written by military victors.

“Without the victories of peacemakers and the resourcefulness of the peaceful,” he contends, “there would be no history to write.” This book is essential reading for students, scholars, policy-shapers, activists and general readers involved with how present forms of peace and peacemaking have been influenced by those of the past, and how future forms can benefit by taking these into account. A must-read among books about peace.