was the trauma of being hunted by animals, and eaten. ''The original trauma - meaning, of course, not a single event but a longstanding condition Of being preyed on by animals that were initially far more skilled hunters than ourselves,'' and far more numerous as well. And this is the experience, not of hunting, but Ehrenreich contends, pointing to ''a primordial experience that we have managed, as a species, to almost entirely repress. Man the hunted, not man the hunter, invested war with its passions, Ms. Is as likely to make people flee war as to embrace it. paid surrogates to fight in their stead.'' ''Instinct'' War, having instead ''fled their homelands, served lengthy prison terms, hacked off limbs, shot off feet or index fingers, feigned illness or insanity, or. And some men ''have gone to near-suicidal lengths'' to avoid Those explanations do not account for the human need to ''sacralize'' war, she argues. Versions of testosterone poisoning, only by men. Ehrenreich regards as inadequate some commonplace explanations of war - that men and nations grasp war in order to advance their interests or because of some unchanging ''aggressive instinct'' possessed by all humans or, in faddish It is a welcome approach, in contrast to the stern, pontificating style of many other (usually male) authorities on war. Seeks to nudge and provoke readers, not overpower them.

She knows that ''Blood Rites'' is an extended essay, not an academic treatise, and that she surveys rather than exhausts an enormous range of scholarship. She brings appropriate caution to her task. One of humankind's most intractable subjects, one comparable in mystery to sexuality, another topic she has taken on.

One of today's most original writers has tackled Ehrenreich presents it only to serve her argument. The torrent of blood here - mythological and real, historical and current, human and animal - would be repellent, except that Ms. His book is soaked with the blood of ancient dangers, rituals and practices that, Barbara Ehrenreich argues, invested war with passions that still rule us today. Our impulse to make war, Barbara Ehrenreich says, resides in a deep ancestral memory of our role as prey

The hunter primal torrent