The Purpose of War: What Conflict Reveals in the Body, Systems, and History (2025)
War is usually told in terms of armies and empires. But its battlegrounds are also inside our bodies, our families, our cultures, and the earth itself. Drawing on history, medicine, psychology, and story, The Purpose of War reframes conflict not as something to glorify or erase, but as a force that strips away illusions and exposes truths we would rather not face. From the trenches of World War I to the inherited trauma carried in families, from autoimmune illness to ecological collapse, Dr. Elizabeth Brewer shows how war’s imprint lives on in memory, physiology, and community. Part history, part clinical reflection, this book bridges science and soul. It offers readers not answers but companions for their own journey of listening, asking not only how wars wound, but what they reveal, and how we might begin to repair. For readers of Bessel van der Kolk, Gabor Maté, and Rebecca Solnit, The Purpose of War is both searing and hopeful: a reminder that even devastation carries meaning, and that from revelation, repair can emerge.
