What are the causes of war? Wars are generally begun by a revisionist state seeking to take territory. The psychological root of revisionism is the yearning for glory, honor and power. Human nature is the primary cause of war, but political regimes can temper or intensify these passions. This book examines the effects of six types of regime on foreign policy: monarchy, republic and sultanistic, charismatic, and military and totalitarian dictatorship. Dictatorships encourage and unleash hum...

Half a millennium of European warfare brilliantly retold by masterly historian Brendan SimmsAt the heart of Europe's history lies a puzzle. In most of the world humankind has created enormous political frameworks, whether ancient (such as China) or modern (such as the United States). Sprawling empires, kingdoms or republics appear to be the norm. By contrast Europe has remained stubbornly chaotic and fractured into often amazingly tiny pieces, with each serious att...

Excerpted from Niall Ferguson’s sprawling bestseller The War of the World, The Abyss now stands on its own as one of the most thrilling short histories of World War I ever written. This is not a conventional military history about battles and generals. Rather, The Abyss examines how World War I saw the birth of total war—fought between societies as much as armies—and must therefore be understood in terms of the financial crises it unleashed, the multinational emp...

The past is capricious enough to support every stance - no matter how questionable. In 2002, the Bush administration decided that dealing with Saddam Hussein was like appeasing Hitler or Mussolini, and promptly invaded Iraq. Were they wrong to look to history for guidance? No; their mistake was to exaggerate one of its lessons while suppressing others of equal importance. History is often hijacked through suppression, manipulation, and, sometimes, even outright deception. MacMillan's book ...

Celebrated for bringing a personal touch to history in her Pulitzer Prize–winning epic The Guns of August and other classic books, Barbara W. Tuchman reflects on world events and the historian’s craft in these perceptive, essential essays.From thoughtful pieces on the historian’s role to striking insights into America’s past and present to trenchant observations on the international scene, Barbara W. Tuchman looks at history in a unique way and draws lesso...

The world at the beginning of the 20th century seemed for most of its inhabitants stable and relatively benign. Globalizing, booming economies married to technological breakthroughs seemed to promise a better world for most people. Instead, the 20th century proved to be overwhelmingly the most violent, frightening and brutalized in history with fanatical, often genocidal warfare engulfing most societies between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War. What went wron...

Since 1945, the European states which had previously glamorised their military elites, and made going to war the highest expression of patriotism, have renounced violence as a way of settling their disputes. Violence has been eclipsed as a tool of statesmen. This astonishing reversal is the subject of James Sheehan's masterly book. It is also a timely reminder of the differences between Europe and America, at a time when the USA is asserting its right and duty to make war for ideological o...

With over a million copies already sold, this is the newly updated edition of the definitive collection of great speeches ancient and modern. From calls to arms to demands for peace, and from cries of freedom to words of inspiration, this stirring anthology captures the voices of prophets and politicians, rebels and tyrants, soldiers and statesman, placing them in historical context.This revised edition includes speeches that have shaped the modern world: from Aung San Suu Kyi on f...

The top five Sunday Times bestseller.'Breathtaking' Daily Mail.'Astonishing' Sun.'Shimmering' Spectator.'Extraordinary' Daily Telegraph. The Colour of Time spans more than a hundred years of world history from the reign of Queen Victoria and the US Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and beginning of the Space Age. It charts the rise and f...

Christopher Hitchens' iconclastic collection is the perfect companion to US-UK relations by the greatest Anglo-American writer of his generation.Since the end of the Cold War so-called experts have been predicting the eclipse of America's "special relationship" with Britain. But as events have shown, especially in the wake of 9/11, the political and cultural ties between America and Britain have grown stronger. Blood, Class and Empire examines the dynamics...

**'It will change the way you remember the 20th century and read the news in the 21st' Steven Pinker'A clarion call to preserve law and order across our planet' Philippe Sands'A fascinating and important book ... given the state of the world, The Internationalists has come along at the right moment' Margaret MacMillan, Financial Times**Since the end of the Second World War, we have moved from an international system in which war was legal, and acce...

The U.S. government, complicit with the well-connected corporations, since the so-called Civil War, continues to wage war and destruction. Lincolns revolutionary war, supported by Marx and Engels, caused at least 618,222 and perhaps as many as 700,000 deaths, including about 50,000 Confederate civilians. Soldiers who were fighting, dying and killing during that war were in training for future wars. If Americans could kill fellow citizens, then they would use force against foreign citizens,...