Butler gave this speech on a nationwide tour in the early 1930s, and the audiobook preserving it runs exactly one hour with nothing cut to get there. A career military officer who had reached the rank of major general spent his retirement telling Americans, from inside the profession, how business interests benefit commercially from warfare. The argument is that a privileged few draw enormous profit out of mass human suffering subsidized by public funding, and the speech closes with several practical proposals for reducing what the copy calls the pillage. Everything else on this page is a consequence of those sixty minutes.
Where This One Lands
Compression is the whole effect. An hour leaves no room for qualification and Butler does not qualify: he names the mechanism, gives the arithmetic of who got rich, and moves on. A modern history of the same subject would run fifteen hours and hedge every claim. This runs sixty minutes and hedges nothing, which makes it a different kind of document and it should be bought as one. You are not getting an analysis of war profiteering here. You are getting the primary source that later analyses cite.
Credentials do the heavy lifting and the byline knows it. Major General Smedley D. Butler USMC Retired is how the author field reads, rank and service and retirement status all included, which is unusual on a listing and entirely deliberate. The claim is not that war is a racket in theory. It is that a man who spent a career running the operations is telling you what they were actually for, and the whole persuasive weight rests on that one fact about the speaker.
W.K.L., writing in October 2019, puts the point better than the marketing does: this is not a rant from an armchair quarterback, and a short book can be packed with history and hindsight. Sherif Ali, writing in October 2025, reads it the same way and files it as economic history of war rather than as polemic. Two responses six years apart, both landing on the same classification, which for a document this inflammatory is a useful signal about how it reads in practice.
Why Listen to War Is a Racket
Speech is a form that belongs to audio before it belongs to print, and that is the strongest argument for this edition over a paperback. Butler wrote these words to be delivered standing up, to rooms of people, on a tour. Every rhetorical decision in the text, the repetition, the direct address, the blunt itemizing of profits, was made for an audience that was listening rather than reading. Jack Eddelman holds the credit for this reading, and whatever choices sit behind it, the material arrives in the medium it was built for.
Time is the second argument. Books about the economics of war are typically long, and that length is the reason most people who agree they ought to read one never do. The barrier here is sixty minutes, less than an average drive to work, and the compression means every section carries weight. That combination is rare enough in history publishing to count as a feature rather than as a shortcoming.
Solutions are the part most people forget this speech contains. Butler does not stop at diagnosis; the description promises several practical proposals for reducing the pillage, and they arrive in the closing stretch. Whether you find them workable is a separate question from whether the diagnosis holds, and a listener expecting an hour of pure denunciation will be surprised to reach an actual program. That section also dates the document more visibly than any other, which carries its own kind of interest.
What Gives Us Pause
Armadillo Chaser, writing in August 2019, filed the only grade below five stars, and the complaint concerns a printed object: a thirty-six-page book measuring five inches by seven by an eighth of an inch thick, judged not worth the cost. A physical product review is sitting on a page selling a recording, and it is dragging the 4.4 badge down. Nothing settles whether the same text underlies this reading, but the arithmetic is suggestive, since thirty-six pages read aloud at ordinary pace lands close to an hour, which is exactly the duration on offer.
Nineteen ratings is a thin base for any average, and the written column is thinner still in substance. The August 2025 entry is filed on somebody else's behalf and reports only that a household member listened twice, which is real evidence that the hour rewards a second pass and very little else. Written grades run five, five, five, five and four while the aggregate sits at 4.4, so fourteen unwritten scores are doing work you cannot inspect. Weigh the document itself here, because the badge is not telling you much.
Who Should Listen to War Is a Racket
xly, writing in March 2018, names three audiences and gets all three right: people considering enlistment, veterans reconsidering their own service, and taxpayers wondering where the money went. That third group is the one the speech was actually aimed at, and it is also the one most likely to find the hour uncomfortable rather than confirming. Butler is not writing to console anybody, including the people who already agree with him.
History listeners who want context, footnotes and scholarly apparatus should look elsewhere, because none of that fits inside sixty minutes and none of it is promised anywhere on the page. Treat the file as a primary document rather than as a book: hear it once, then read something modern that argues with it. Balanced history it is not, and the near-eighty years between Butler's tour and this 2010 recording do more interpretive work than anything on the listing admits.
In Brief
- Performance: Jack Eddelman holds the sole credit on a sixty-minute file from a small independent audio house, with no introduction, editor or historical consultant listed.
- What it covers: War profiteering, public money turned into private gain, a career officer turning on his own trade
- Feel: Blunt and unhedged, over almost before it settles
- Our call: Take it as the primary source it is, and read the modern arguments about it separately.
Before You Listen
Is the War Is a Racket audiobook the complete text of the speech?
The copy offers it as the speech Butler delivered on a nationwide tour in the early 1930s, discussing from career experience how business interests profit commercially from warfare. Nothing on the listing flags an abridged version and nothing promises added introductory or editorial material. The duration field is the only guide to what the file actually contains.
When was this recording made, and how does that affect the price?
The recording dates from June 18, 2010, published by CoolBeat Audiobook Publishing, a small independent audio house, while the speech itself dates from the early 1930s. The listing says nothing about rights status. Several audio editions of this text circulate, so what you are paying for is this particular reading rather than exclusive access to the words.
Does the audiobook name specific companies or figures?
The description stays general, promising a frank discussion of how business interests benefit commercially from warfare and how a privileged few take substantial profits out of mass human suffering. No company, sum or transaction appears on the listing itself, so a buyer wanting to check the specifics before purchase has nothing on this page to check them against.
