The acclaimed author of The Face of Battle examines centures of conflict in a variety of diverse societies and cultures. "Keegan is at once the most readable and the most original of living military historians . . . A History of Warfare is perhaps the most remarkable study of warfare that has yet been written."--The New York Times Book Review.From the Trade Paperback edition. From Booklist War's complementary attractiveness and repulsiveness summon legions of religious, rational, and anthropological justifications, and historian Keegan here audaciously attempts to unify them. He can fairly be named the foremost contemporary writer on the subject, and his sharp ideas and easeful prose have prepared a wide audience for this, certainly his magnum opus. Keegan takes three broad approaches to the bloody business: first, the archaeological proofs of war; second, the impact of weaponry from obsidian-tipped arrow to gunpowder to atomic bomb; and third, and most persuasively, the centrality of the belligerent society's culture. Culture, he believes, has been overshadowed by Clausewitz's rationalism; his (mistranslated) dictum was "war is the continuation of policy by other means." But for what rational goal was World War I fought? Alsace-Lorraine? In Keegan's view, generals are vainly guided by the old Prussian's visions of a quick, decisive battle, such as Bismarck enjoyed. But Europe's culture had changed since the Iron Chancellor; by 1914 it universally reduced young men to cogs in an industrial process of death--hardly, any of them, instruments of policy. The warrior caste collided with technical change, continuing a dialectic that has existed everywhere since the dawn of humankind. This tension is the fascinating allure of this work, which ranges confidently across millennia and civilizations. Sumerians, Aztecs, Chinese, Mamelukes, Mongols, Crusaders--all waged war in distinct expression of their cultures. In the process, they produced innovations as varied as the Greek phalanx or that Roman first, the professional army. Whatever war is, it is not simple to understand or to control, but Keegan focuses its blurry fury with acute, cross-disciplinary insight and eminently accessible styleGilbert Taylor Review "Perhaps the most remarkable study of warfare that has yet been written."--The New York Times Book Review"A masterpiece...This is one of those rare books which could still be required reading in its field a hundred years from now."--The New YorkerFrom the Trade Paperback edition. From the Inside Flap d author of The Face of Battle examines centures of conflict in a variety of diverse societies and cultures. "Keegan is at once the most readable and the most original of living military historians . . . A History of Warfare is perhaps the most remarkable study of warfare that has yet been written."--The New York Times Book Review.From the Trade Paperback edition.