A Short History

In this concise history of war, Jeremy Black ranges widely, giving due attention to non-western as well as western traditions. The history of war is inextricably bound to the history of the world…

'A clearly written, remarkably comprehensive guide to the greatest story on Earth - man's journey from the earliest times to the modern day. Highly recommended.' - Dan Jones, author of The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England
'Just what we all wanted but were too scared to ask for: everything that ever happened in one digestible, readable book.' - Matt Ridley, author

"A brilliant inquiry into culture and society over some seven centuries, Mary Evans explores the origins and trajectories of modernity from the Reformation through the Enlightenment to the contemporary period. Her intellectual control of complex ideas and diverse forms of evidence is consistently impressive. Exploring various pessimistic, dystopian strands in European perspectives on modernity by Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Weber and Theodor Adorno, she defends a balanced view of both the negative and positive consequences of modernization. This is historical sociology at its best: judicious, theoretically informed, carefully crafted, grounded in empirical research, and above all intellectually clever. A Short History of Society will prove to be a valuable companion to the student who needs a concise scholarly and sociological overview of modernity."

Despite the numerous books on World War II, until now there has been no one-volume survey that was both objective and comprehensive. Previous volumes have usually been written from an exclusively British or American point of view, or have ignored the important causes and consequences of the War.