As a celebration of our alumni, each month we will highlight a new book written by one of
Oxford's North American-based alumni.
Our November 2021 book is "Roots of War: Wanting Power, Seeing Threat,
Justifying Force" by David G. Winter (St John's, 1960).
David G. Winter is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Michigan, and a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico. He was educated at Harvard University and the University of Oxford. He is a personality and social psychologist with a special interest in relationships between personality and social contexts (such as political institutions, history, and social and educational structures). His research has focused on the psychological aspects of conflict escalation, war, and peace; power and power motivation; authoritarianism, and the motivational bases of leadership. He has pioneered development of ways of objectively measuring, at a distance, the personalities of political leaders and historical figures.
He is the author of The Power Motive; Motivating Economic Achievement (with D. C. McClelland); translation and editing of Otto Rank’s The Don-Juan Legend; A New Case for the Liberal Arts (with D. C. McClelland and A. J. Stewart); Personality: Analysis and Interpretation of Lives; and most recently Roots of War: Wanting Power, Seeing Threat, Justifying Force (Oxford University Press, 2018), as well as numerous papers in psychological journals.
Winter has been a Rhodes Scholar and Guggenheim Fellow, and has received the Henry A. Murray Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. He is a past president and past Councilor of the International Society of Political Psychology, from which he has received the Harold Lasswell Award for distinguished scientific contribution to the field, and the Jeanne Knutson Award for service to ISPP.
You can purchase Roots of War: Wanting Power, Seeing Threat, Justifying Force here.
Are you an alumni author?
If you have written a book which was published within the last three years, or is due to be released soon, please email us the following information.
Your full name
Alumni number (or college/year of matriculation)
Title of book
Date of publication
ISBN
Link to purchase the book online
We thank you for sharing your books with us, and will let you know if you are selected for a feature in the coming months.
Please visit our archive page to look back at previous Alumni Authors