In this encyclopedically learned and immensely gripping book, one of our foremost military historians demolishes the famous dictum that war is the continuation of policy by other means. On Easter Island, for example, rival factions exterminated one another in a ceaseless competition for the egg of a sooty tern. The Aztecs seem to have fought for nothing more than the captives that they slaughtered by the thousands. And what policy could possibly have informed the Gulf War, in which the United States and its allies destroyed the army of Saddam Hussein, only to leave Saddam himself securely in power?

Analyzing centuries of conflict —in societies from the Amazon to the Balkans, waged by nomadic horsemen, peasant guerrillas, and superbly disciplined regiments— John Keegan unveils the deepest motive behind humanity's penchant for mass bloodshed. A History of Warfare is a masterpiece of military scholarship, irresistible in its style and terrifying in its implications.