The third book in Professor Christian Potholm’s war trilogy (which includes Winning at War and War Wisdom), Understanding War provides a most workable bibliography dealing with the vast literature on war and warfare. As such, it provides insights into over 3000 works on this overwhelmingly extensive material. Understanding War is thus the most comprehensive annotated bibliography available today. Moreover, by dividing war material into eighteen overarching themes of analysis and fifty seminal topics, and focusing on these, Understanding War enables the reader to access and understand the broadest possible array of materials across both time and space, beginning with the earliest forms of warfare and concluding with the contemporary situation. Stimulating and thought-provoking, this volume is essential for an understanding of the breadth and depth of the vast scholarship dealing with war and warfare through human history and across cultures.

Table of Contents:
Preface Part I Analyzing Warfare 1.Why Study Military Matters? 2.“Eros and Mars: The Nature of Humankind” -or- “Making Love AND War” 3.The Search for Fundamental Truths about War: Sun Tzu, Kautilya, Thucydides, Jomini, Clausewitz and Other Military Thinkers and Students of War 4.Geopolitics and the Long Shadow of Geography 5.The Template of Mars “Superior Weapons Technology” “Superior Discipline” “Sustained but Controlled Ruthlessness” “Receptivity to Military and Integrative Innovation” “The Ability and Willingness to Protect Capital from People and Rulers” “The Centrality of Superior Will” “The Belief That There Will Always Be another War” 6.“The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb” -or- “Hiroshima as Seen Through the Lens of Mars” 7.“Mars is a Jealous God”: Part I The Lessons of Iraq War I-or-“Clausewitz Vindicated—For the Last Time?” 8.“Is the Template Obsolete in the Face of Insurgencies?” Theoreticians and Practitioners Overviews of Insurgency Some Illustrative Case Studies: Showing the Experience of Insurgency and Counter Insurgency Across Cross-Cultural Lines 9.The American “Empire” and the Dangers Which Lie Ahead The Empire as Empire (or Hegemon) The Nuclear Dimension China Failed and Fragile States Islamic Radical Salafists and Local and Global Insurgencies Afghanistan: Watch on the Danube Redux Part II Topics in War 10.Early Warfare 11.Classical Infantry: Greek 12.Classical Infantry: Roman 13.“The Horsemen Commeth”: The Centrality of Mounted Warcraft Part I: The Mounted Horsemen of the Steppes Part II: European Heavy Horse: Feudalism and Knighthood, Power Diffusion and Its Consequences and Later Power Centralization Part III: Byzantium Part IV: African Heavy Horse: Power Centralization and Power Diffusion Part V: Arab Light(er) Horse: Flow and Ebb, Ebb and Flow Part VI: Japanese and Chinese Part VII: Parthian and Sassanian Part VIII: Mongol and Later Turkic Asian Horsemen Part IX: Indian and South Asian 14.The Vikings 15.The Gunpowder and Discipline Revolution and The Expansion of the Gunpowder Empires 16.Era of the European Great Captains Maurice of Nassau (1567-1625) Gustavus Adolphus (1594-1632) Charles XII (1682-1718) Louis XIV The Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722) Frederick the Great (1712-1786) 17.Warfare on the Periphery and The Expansion of the European Gunpowder Empires 18.Revolution and Civil War 19.The Real United States Is Born American Military History (General) War of 1812 The Mexican War 20.Further Democratization of War: The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars Spread Nationalism to Prussia, Austria and Especially Russia 21.“The American Civil War: Fratricide in Living Color” 22.Civil Wars in Perspective Some Illustrative Examples 23.Precursors to 20th Century War 24.World War I: “The Hypertrophy of War and the Triumph of the Defense” 25.Transition Within the Continuum: The Interwar Years 26.The Battle of Nomonhan/Khalkin Gol 27.“The Triumph of the Offense”: The War in Europe 28.World War II: “Warcraft in the Pacific: 1941–1945” 29.The Cold War and Nuclear Weapons 1946–1992 30.The Korean War: or “The Forgotten War of Great Irony” 31.Vietnam: “People’s War, Long War” 32.“Mars is a Jealous God” Part II, The Lessons of Afghanistan I and II, and Iraq II and III Afghanistan I and II Iraq Wars II and III 33.Weapons in War 34.Logistics in War 35.“The Daughters of Mars:” Women at War 36.Homosexuality and Warfare 37.Warriorhood 38.The Return of Warriors 39.Other Wars 40.War Novels, Short Stories, Memoires and Poetry 41.War and Anti-War Films Including Revolutionary Warfare 42.Just War/Moral War End note