OVERCONFIDENCE AND WAR: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions

"Does a human tendency toward overconfidence lead us into wars when a more realistic assessment might keep the peace?" Johnson, a fellow at Princeton's Society of Fellows, poses that question in this debut, and his answer, stretched out over eight densely written chapters, is (much more often than not): yes. Johnson hones in on different nations' decisions at what he posits as turning points in 20th-century history: WWI and the Vietnam War, which became shooting wars, and the Munich Crisis of 1938 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, which did not. Johnson ties the trait of overconfidence to humankind's evolutionary past, maintaining that it is "an integral part of the human psyche." He finds the Iraq war, to which he devotes his last chapter, a consequence of that overconfidence. Johnson is meticulous in backing up his assertions, but (despite the trade-like subtitle) the book reads like an academic treatise; be prepared for arguments made solely for other experts, long stretches of quotation and dense charts. (Oct.)