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:Three Second World War Studies

STEVEN MERRITT MINER. Between Churchill and Stalin: The Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the Origins of the Grand Alliance. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Pp. 319. $36.00 (US);

CHARLES MESSENGER. Hitler's Gladiator: The Life and Times of Oberstgruppenfiihrer and Panzergeneral-Oberst der Waffen-SS Sepp Dietrich. London and New York: Brassey's Defence Publishers (Pergamon), 1988. Pp.xvi,245.$26.95 (US);

TONY LE TISSIER. The Battle of Berlin 1945. London: Jonathan Cape, 1988. Pp. xiii, ago. £15.     

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: 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: Fascist Italy at War

RENZO DE FELICE. Mussolini l'alleato: L'ltalia in guerra, 1940–1943: 1 : Dalla guerra ‘breve’ alla guerra lunga: II: Crisi e agonia del regime. Torino: Guilio Einaudi, 1990. Pp. xiv, 1,576. L. 150,000.     

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: Soviet Behaviour in the Cold War

JACQUES LÉVESQUE. The Enigma of 1989: The USSR and the Liberation of Eastern Europe, trans. Keith Martin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Pp. ix, 267. $35.00 (US);

JEFFREY T. CHECKEL. Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997. Pp. xv, 191. $26.00 (US);

MIKE BOWKER. Russian Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing, 1997; dist. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate. Pp. xi, 297. $72.95 (US);

VOJTECH MASTNY. The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xi, 285. $44.50 (CDN).     

Review Article: The Ways of the World

S. E. FINER. The History of Government from the Earliest Times: Volume I: Ancient Monarchies and Empires. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. xvii, 610; Volume II: The Intermediate Ages. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. vii, 613–1,061; Volume III: Empires, Monarchies, and the Modern State. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. vii, 1,065–1,701. $270.00 (CDN), for the three volumes. Reviewed by A. P. Thornton     

Review Article: China in World Affairs

Wenguang Shao. China, Britain, and Businessmen: Political and Commercial Relations, 1949-57. London: Macmillan, 1991. Pp. xx, 257. £50.00

William O. Walker III. Opium and Foreign Policy: The Anglo-American Search for Order in Asia, 1912-1954. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Pp. xvi, 345. $39.95 (us)

Zhang Yongjin. China in the International System, 1918-20: The Middle Kingdom at the Periphery. London: Macmillan, 1991. Pp. xi, 262. £40.00.     

Review Article: Cold War or Cold Peace

JOHN LEWIS GADDIS. The United States and the End of the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. ix, 301. $34.95 (CDN);

MICHAEL J. HOGAN, ed. The End of the Cold War: Its Meanings and Implications. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xv, 294. $13.95 (us), paper;

JAMES CHACE. The Consequences of the Peace: The New Internationalism and American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. xii, 221. $32.50 (CDN).     

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: Technology and Culture during the First Climacteric

In 1953 Israel abandoned the ‘defensive–offensive’ military strategy that it had adopted four years earlier, in the wake of the First Arab–Israeli War, in favor of an ‘offensive–defensive’ military strategy that, to a large extent, persists until this day. This paper, which employs previously untapped Israeli official documents, personal interviews, memoirs, biographies, and secondary sources, casts new light on this critical juncture in the history of Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict. The paper challenges existing works by showing when and how Israel's ‘offensive–defensive’ military strategy was adopted. More specifically, the authors argue that it was the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), especially its planning bodies - and not the Prime Minister and Defense Minister, David Ben Gurion, or the IDF's Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Dayan - that initiated this change, and that the new strategy met no objection when it was discussed and approved by the Israeli government. The authors also inquire about the possible implications of this change for Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict, and ask how this case informs general debates regarding the origins of military strategies.