Review Article: Hot War,Cold War,New War

STANLEY KARNOW. Vietnam, A History. New York: Penguin, 1984. Pp. xi, 752. $10.95 (US); GABRIEL KOLKO. Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, The United States, and the Modern Historical Experience. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985. Pp. xvi, 628. $25.00 (US); TIMOTHY J. LOMPERIS. The War Everyone Lost-and Won: America's Intervention in Vietnam's Twin Struggles. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1985. Pp. x, 192. $22.50 (US); R.B. SMITH. An International History of the Vietnam War: The Kennedy Strategy. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. Pp. xii, 429. $25.00 (US); HARRY O. SUMMERS, Jr. On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War. New York: Dell, 1984. Pp. 288. $3.95 (US).     

Review Article: Bystanders to Genocide in Rwanda

BRUCE D. JONES. Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2001. Pp. 209. $49.95 (US); ALAN J. KUPERMAN. The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2001. Pp. 176. $38.95 (US), cloth; $16.95 (US), paper; MAHMOOD MAMDANI. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001. Pp. 380. $45.00 (US), cloth; $16.95 (US), paper; LINDA R. MELVERN. A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide. London: Zed Books, 2000. Pp. x, 272. £49.95, cloth; £14.95, paper; SAMANTHA POWER. ‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Pp. 640. $30.00 (US); PETER RONAYNE. Never Again? The United States and the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide since the Holocaust. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. Pp. 240. $65.00 (US); MICHAEL BARNETT. Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002. Pp. xiii, 215. $25.00 (US); JOHAN POTTIER. Re-imagining Rwanda: Conflict, Survival, and Disinformation in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pp. xvii, 251. $24.00 (US), paper.     

The Not So Peaceful Civilization: A Review of Maya War

The first Maya encountered by Europeans in the early sixteenth century were exceedingly warlike, but by the 1940s the earlier Classic Maya (AD 250–1000) were widely perceived as an inordinately peaceful civilization. Today, in sharp contrast, conflict is seen as integral to Maya society throughout its history. This paper defines war, reviews the evidence for it in the Maya archaeological record, and shows how and why our ideas have changed so profoundly. The main emphasis is on the Classic period, with patterns of ethnohistorically documented war serving as a baseline. Topics include the culture history of conflict, strategy and tactics, the scope and range of operations, war and the political economy, and the intense status rivalry war of the eighth and ninth centuries AD that contributed to the collapse of Classic civilization. Unresolved issues such as the motivations for war, its ritual vs. territorial aims, and sociopolitical effects are discussed at length.     

Review Article: The Beginning and Ending of War

DALE C. COPELAND. The Origins of Major War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. xi, 322. $45.00 (US); H. E. GOEMANS. War and Punishment: The Causes of War Termination and the First World War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Pp. x, 355. $19.95 (US), paper.     

Review Article: The First World War Imagined

ALFREDO BONADEO. Mark of the Beast: Death and Degradation in the Literature of the Great War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989. Pp. viii, 172. $19.00 (US)

SAMUEL HYNES. A War Imagined: The First World War and English Culture. London: Bodley Head, 1990. Pp. xii, 514. £20.00.     

Review Article: Total War or Traditional War

MICHAEL ADAMS. Napoleon and Russia. London and New York, NY: Hambledon Continuum, 2006. Pp. xxiii, 596. $34.95 (US); ROY ADKINS and LESLEY ADKINS. The War for All the Oceans: From Nelson at the Nile to Napoleon at Waterloo. London: Little Brown, 2006. Pp. xxix, 534. £10.9g, paper; ALESSANDRO BARBERO. The Battle: A New History of Waterloo, trans. John Cullen. New York, NY: Walker & Company, 2005. Pp. xii, 340. $16.00 (US), paper; DAVID A. BELL. The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It. Boston, MA and New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 2007; dist. Markham, ON: Thomas Allen. Pp. x, 420. $39.95 (CDN); CHARLES ESDAILE. Napoleon's Wars: An International History, 1803–1815. London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2007. Pp. xvii, 621. $55.00 (CDN); ROBERT HARVEY. The War of Wars: The Epic Struggle between Britain and France, 1723–1815. London: Constable & Robinson, 2006. Pp. xxx, 962. £10.00, paper; FREDERICK W. KAGAN. The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801–1805. Cambridge, MA: De Capo Books, 2006. Pp. xxiv, 774. $40.00 (US); MICHAEL V. LEGGIERE. The Fall of Napoleon: I: The Allied Invasion of France, 1813–1814. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xvii, 686. $35.00 (US); THIERRY LENTZ. Nouvelle histoire du Premier Empire: II: L'effondrement du système napoléonien, 1810–1814. Paris: Fayard, 2007. Pp. 835. €30.00, paper; ADAM ZAMOYSKI. Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna. London: HarperCollins, 2007. Pp. xviii, 634. £25.00. Reviewed by Philip G. Dwyer     

Review Article: Nordic Exceptions in War and Cold War

PHILIP GILTNER. ‘In the Friendliest Manner’: German-Danish Economic Cooperation during the Nazi Occupation of 1940–1949. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. Pp. xii, 258. $49.95 (US); T. MICHAEL RUDDY, ed. Charting an Independent Course: Finland's Place in the Cold War and in US Foreign Policy. Claremont: Regina Books, 1998. Pp. 223. $32.95 (US), cloth; $14.95 (US), paper; MAX JAKOBSON. Finland in the New Europe. Westport: Praeger, 1998. Pp. xiv, 176. $19.95 (US), paper; TEIJA TIILIKAINEN. Europe and Finland: Defining the Political Identity of Finland in Western Europe. Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998. Pp. 185. $68.95 (US). Reviewed by Thomas Munch-Petersen     

Review Article: The Military Orders in War and Peace

MALCOLM BARBER. Crusaders and Heretics, 12th-14th Centuries. Aldershot, UK: Variorum; dist. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 1995. Pp. x, 289. $77.50 (US);

MALCOLM BARBER, ed. The Military Orders: Fighting for the Faith and Caring for the Sick. Aldershot, UK: Variorum; dist. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 1994. Pp. xxvii, 399. $99.50 (US).