A History of Warfare

Based on the premise that all civilizations originate in conflict, this work is a sweeping view of the place of warfare in human culture and an exposition of the human impulse toward violence. It probes the motivations and methods of war over the centuries -- from the strangely ritualistic combat of Stone Age peoples to today's warfare of mass destruction. In the process, it shows how war has maintained its singular hold on the imagination, reaching into "the most secret places of the human heart, places where self dissolves rational purpose, where pride reigns, where emotion is paramount, where instinct is king." John Keegan is, according to Tom Clancy, "the best military historian of our generation."