Why Do We Fight?: Conflict, War, and Peace - Hardcover

"So how can we even start to understand global conflicts and how they get resolved? By breaking them down into their basic parts."
-- from the book

IRA Notable Book for a Global Society, 2014
A Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book of 2013 (ages 9-12)
Shortlisted for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award, Juvenile Non-fiction category, 2013
One of New York Public Library's 10 Nonfiction Titles You May Have Missed: Fall 2013 (YA)

"[An] exemplary study of the reasons disagreements arise and how they can be addressed."
Publishers Weekly, starred review, July 15, 2013

"Walker offers clear, concise explanations of power and resource inequities, cultural divisions, the global role of the United Nations, bias, prejudice, and more...[she] gives readers the tools to understand anda analyze the kinds of clashes, wars, and disagreements that they regularly hear about in the news."
Publishers Weekly, September 1, 2013

..".provides a much needs social studies gap filler... [while] encouraging the reader to think independently; it isn't what you think, but HOW you think. The writing is clear and appropriate for the audience; in one section, she uses the analogy of high school to explain the social, economic, and political interaction of countries."
Ingram Content, September 1, 2013

"Walker does an excellent job of breaking down the basics of conflict...[this] will have a longer shelf life than other informational texts as it won't go out of date quickly. Teachers could build seminars and lessons around each chapters, and interested students will find much to think about."
School Library Journal, September 1, 2013

..".an important source for children expressing an early interest in politics and social justice."
Foreword Reviews, September 1, 2013

"An engaging and accessible overview to peace and conflict studies. ... It would be a welcome addition to school libraries, middle school classrooms, and home collections."
- International Journal on World Peace, September 2014

"Recently, we here at Annie Wright Schools discovered Niki Walker's fantastic Why Do We Fight?. Our fifth grade teachers were so impressed by the selection that they immediately ordered 20 copies to serve as class texts for their unit on Peace and Conflict. Since we use the Primary Years Program through International Baccalaureate, we love any text that starts with concepts and then encourages students to search out real-world instances of those conflicts through research and observation. Why Do We Fight? is perfect for this."
- Joe Romano, Library Media Specialist, Annie Wright Schools, Tacoma, WA

Battles, protests, standoffs, strikes. We hear about them all the time. On the surface, a battle and a protest don't seem to have much in common, but they're really just two ways of handling a dispute. One uses violence, the other uses signs and picket lines. But both start as a disagreement between two groups of people. Both are conflicts.

Since it's impossible for people to agree on everything all the time, conflicts naturally pop up every day, all over the world. Sometimes they turn into full-blown wars, which can be a lot trickier to understand than the conflicts that pop up in everyday life, but every conflict has some things in common.

Using real world examples, Why Do We Fight? teaches kids to recognize the structures, factors, and complex histories that go into creating conflicts, whether personal or global — as well as the similarities between both. They'll be given tools to seek out information, enabling them to make informed opinions while learning to respect that others may form different ones.

From culture clashes and trade disputes to disagreements about how to govern, Why Do We Fight? insists that the key to fulfilling humankind's wish for "world peace" lies in how we choose to deal with conflict and provides a genuine cause for optimism in the face of an at-times frightening world.