About the Book: The Shortest History of War
War has changed, but we have not. From our hunter-gatherer ancestors to the
rival nuclear powers of today, whenever resources have been contested, weve gone
to battle. Acclaimed historian Gwynne Dyer illuminates our many martial clashes
in this brisk account, tracing warfare from prehistory to the worlds first
cities?and on to the thousand-year "classical age" of combat, which ended when
the firearm changed everything. He examines the brief interlude of "limited war"
before eighteenth-century revolution ushered in "total war"?and how the
devastation was halted by the nuclear shock of Hiroshima.
Then came the Cold War and Russias invasion of Ukraine,