A history of warfare - John Keegan

John Keegan believes that the history of warfare has for far too long been written either as a specialist study of 'war as the continuation of politics' or as a horror story. Its Place at the heart culture and the enormous variety of forms it takes in different societies has too often been ignored. The narrative of the book moves from the strangely ritualistic combat of Stone Age peoples to the Nihilistic destructiveness of mass warfare in the modern age. The author demonstrates how particular cultures and their styles of warmaking go hand in hand. He also attaches his analysis to the great changes in military technology - the discoveries of bronze and iron, the taming of the horse to the chariot and riding, the introduction of gunpowder and the mobilisation of science and industry to produce the waepons of mass destruction of the 20th century. A HISTORY OF WARFARE stresses that warmaking, for all its destructiveness, has been an inescapable feature of human culture since organised societies emerged. It also recognises, however, that man has consistently sought to limit the effects of his own capacity for violence and that now, in the nuclear age, he has no alternative to making limitation effective if he is to survive. The culmination of his arguement and the scope of the study on which it is based may provoke as much controversy as Paul Kennedy's