In Looking for the Good War, Elizabeth D. Samet reexamines the literature, art, and culture that emerged after World War II, bringing her expertise as a professor of English at West Point to bear on the complexity of the postwar period in national life. She exposes the confusion about American identity that was expressed during and immediately after the war, and the deep national ambivalence toward war, violence, and veterans--all of which were suppressed...

This fresh and challenging inquiry into human societies takes a deep look at the effects and roles of war. As the most complex of all human endeavors, warfare - from ancient to modern - has spurred the growth of essential new technologies; demanded the adoption of complex economic systems; shaped the ideology and culture of nations; promoted developments in art and literature; and spread faith across the globe. Over the course of 48 highly provocative

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John Keegan, widely considered the greatest military historian of our time and the author of acclaimed volumes on ancient and modern warfare—including, most recently, The First World War, a national bestseller—distills what he knows about the why’s and how’s of armed conflict into a series of brilliantly concise essays.
Is war a natural condition of humankind? What are the origins of war? Is the modern state dependent...

"An acclaimed expert on violence and seasoned peacebuilder explains the five reasons why conflict (rarely) blooms into war, and how to interrupt that deadly process. It's easy to overlook the underlying strategic forces of war, to see it solely as a series of errors, accidents, and emotions gone awry. It's also easy to forget that war shouldn't happen-and most of the time it doesn't. Around the world there are millions of hostile rivalries, yet only...

Mann examines the history of war through the ages and across the globe—from ancient Rome to Ukraine, from imperial China to the Middle East, from Japan and Europe to Latin and North America. He explores the reasons groups go to war, the different forms of wars, how warfare has changed and how it has stayed the same, and the surprising ways in which seemingly powerful countries lose wars. In combining ideological, economic, political, and military...

"The Fear and the Freedom is Keith Lowe's follow-up to Savage Continent. While that book painted a picture of Europe in all its horror as WWII was ending, The Fear and the Freedom looks at all that has happened since, focusing on the changes that were brought about because of WWII--simultaneously one of the most catastrophic and most innovative events in history. It killed millions and eradicated empires, creating the idea of human rights, and giving...

One of the most violent conflicts in the history of civilization, World War I has been strangely forgotten in American culture. It has become a ghostly war fought in a haze of memory, often seen merely as a distant preamble to World War II. In The Long Shadow critically acclaimed historian David Reynolds seeks to broaden our vision by assessing the impact of the Great War across the twentieth century.