About the Book
In 1932, on the eve of catastrophe, Albert Einstein wrote to Sigmund Freud with a single question: Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war? Their exchange — short, unsparing, alive with the urgency of a world about to burn — is one of the most honest attempts in the modern record to ask what peace would actually require of us, both as policy and as a species. And yet, they could not have foreseen how much harder the question would become a century on, when the endings we now face are the kind that leave nothing on the other side. "How Peace" picks up where they left off. This is not a book about inner peace. It is not a book about feeling calm in a world on fire. It is a book about the actual work — the conversations we keep avoiding, the propaganda we keep falling for, the stories we keep telling ourselves about who is to blame, the collective hypnosis that has to break before anything else can change. Part I is a manifesto: peace as a practice, not an identity. In this view, peace includes the willingness to enter conflict without losing ourselves, the other, or the hope of a shared future. Part II is an anatomy: the seven mechanisms by which ordinary people have been talked into every war humans have ever fought — the same story, retold in every age and every language as if it had never been told before. Part III is a craft: how to carry these ideas into the conversations you are already having — with the family member you've given up on, the neighbor you've written off, the stranger who terrifies you — in a way that doesn't get brushed aside, doesn't collapse into argument, and actually builds something. Part IV is about hope — the stubborn, ferocious kind the Greeks placed at the bottom of Pandora's jar, the one thing that remained after everything else had escaped. It asks what that hope requires of us now, and what it would take to wake up before the catastrophe rather than after. If you have ever wondered why we keep doing this — why this species, with all its intelligence and tenderness, cannot seem to stop killing itself — this book is an honest attempt at an answer. And it is an invitation to begin where the work has always begun: with one person, in one room, refusing to look away.
About the Author
Scott Petit has been a psychotherapist in the Pacific Northwest for more than thirty years. In his practice he has watched the psychologies of war and peace play out on the battlefields within the individual psyche — the same fears, the same longings, the same impulses that drive nations to the brink, working themselves out in the quieter arena of a single human life. How Peace is the argument he has drawn from that long observation, and an invitation to the work he believes is now asked of all of us.
Join the Discussion
Connect with fellow members across the political spectrum—Strong Left, Center Left, Center/Independent, Center Right, and Strong Right. This is a space for sharing communication techniques and building bridges, not burning them. Swap strategies, ask honest questions, and learn how to talk with people who see the world differently. Whether you're here to find common ground, sharpen your listening skills, or just understand another perspective, there's a seat at the table. Jump into a thread, start your own, and help make conversation possible again.
Latest Updates
Get in Touch
Reach out. About speaking engagements, Conversation Circles, a story for the Peace Diaries, or push-back on something in the book — disagreement is welcome here. Or write because you have something to say and nowhere else feels right to say it. We read everything that comes in, and answer when we can.
scott@howpeace.com