By one estimate, humans have fought wars in ninety-four out of every hundred years for the past 5,000. Despite radical differences in the prosecution of warfare between ancient and modern societies, there remains a linear connection to the ways that Greco-Roman cultures thought about war--its conduct, aims, tactics, and ethics. This is epitomized most obviously in the Greek and Latin derivatives that dot our language of war--"army,"military, "strategy." Combining astute analyses of the logistics of conflict with the ethics of war, Alfred Bradford offers fascinating parallels between warfare in ancient and contemporary societies. After a brief prelude that discusses the Greeks' first descriptions of battle in the Iliad, Bradford outlines the changes in warfare from the earliest records through the fall of the Roman Empire to contemporary wars of counterterrorism. The second half of the book turns to discuss more holistically the study of war, the writing of war, and images of war, drawing on a diverse range of texts and images. Fundamentally, Bradford shows that despite massive differences in weaponry and firepower, the basic principles of warfare have remained unchanged over thousands of years, and even as we move further from antiquity, war in the modern age is persistently illuminated by our Greek and Roman forbearers.

Product Description: Many peoples throughout history have fought pirates, writes Alfred Bradford in Flying the Black Flag. Some have lost and some have won. We should learn from their experience. From Odysseus—the original pirate of literature and lore—through Blackbeard and the feared pirates of the Spanish Main, his book reveals the strategies and methods pirates used to cheat, lie, kill, and rob their way into the historical record, wreaking terror in their bloody wakes...read more

(view table of contents)

Product Description: I was hooked by the unusual style and, moreso, by the unusual approach to the familiar material . . . Articulate, sensitive, and intelligent . . . an unusually readable and persuasive narrative. Robert W...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

(view table of contents)