War No More, edited by Lawrence Rosenwald

This comprehensive collection, spanning 300 years and 150 authors, includes excerpts from political writers such as Martin Luther King Jr., Daniel Berrigan, Dorothy Day, Shirley Chisholm, and Barack Obama, but also a surprising array of artistic voices: Mark Twain, Joan Baez, Denise Levertov, and Bill Watter­son. “How come we play war and not peace?” the cartoon tiger Hobbes asks, to which Calvin replies: “Too few role models.” Warner Mifflin’s 1796 call “to raise the pure Stan­dard of the Prince of Peace, above all party rage, strife, contention, rents and divisions, in the spirit of meekness and wisdom” chastens Americans today. Yet there is hope. As Bayard Rustin says, “It is always timely and virtuous to change—to take in all humility a new path.”