The new edition of The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare, written
and updated by a team of nine distinguished military historians,
examines how war was waged by Western powers across a sweeping
timeframe, beginning with classical Greece and Rome, moving through the
Middle Ages and the early modern period, down to the wars of the
twenty-first century in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. The book stresses
five essential aspects of the Western way of war: a combination of
technology, discipline, and an aggressive military tradition with an
extraordinary capacity to respond rapidly to challenges and to use
capital rather than manpower to win. Although the focus remains on the
West, and on the role of violence in its rise, each chapter also
examines the military effectiveness of its adversaries and the regions
in which the West's military edge has been - and continues to be -
challenged.