As pungent and concise as his short histories of both world wars, Stokesbury's survey of the half war takes a broad view and seems to leave nothing out but the details. The first third covers the North Korean invasion of June 1950, the Pusan perimeter crisis, MacArthur's master stroke at Inchon and the intervention by Chinese forces that November. At this point, other popular histories of the war reach the three-quarter mark, ending often with a cursory summary of the comparatively undramatic three-and-a-half years required to bring the war to its ambiguous conclusion on July 27, 1953. Stokesbury renders the latter period as interesting as the operational fireworks of the first six months: the Truman-MacArthur controversy; the political limitations on U.S. air power; the need for the Americans to fight the war as cheaply as possible, due to NATO commitments; the prolonged negotiations at Panmunjom over the prisoner-exchange issue; and the effect of the war on the home front. Whether the United States could have/should have stayed out of the war in the first place comes under discussion: no on both counts, according to the author.

World War I was a bloodletting so vast and unprecedented that for a generation it was known simply as the Great War. Casualty lists reached unimagined proportions as the same ground -- places like Ypres and the Somme -- was fought over again and again. Other major bloody battles remain vivid in memory to this day: Gallipoli and the Battle of Jutland are but two examples. Europe was at war with itself, and the effect on Western civilization was profound, its repercussions felt even today.

World War I saw the introduction of modern technology into the military arena: The tank, airplane, machine gun, submarine, and -- most lethal of all -- poison gas, all received their first widespread use. Professor Stokesbury analyzes these technological innovations and the war's complex military campaigns in lucid detail. At the same time he discusses the great political events that unfolded during the war, such as the Russian Revolution and the end of the Hapsburg dynasty, putting the social and political side of the war into the context of modern European history.

A Short History of World War I is the first history of this war to be written in twenty years. It incorporates recent research and current thinking about the war in a highly readable and lively style.

Stokesbury's rare combination of scholarship and readability merits the highest recommendation.
--Booklist

In commemoration of the 150^th anniversary of America's bloody War Between the States, Harper Paperbacks is republishing A Short History of the Civil War by noted historian James L. Stokesbury with a new photo insert. A concise and compelling full account of the brutal conflict that redefined the nation, Stokesbury covers the war's causes and major battles (Bull Run, Antietam, Gettysburg, etc.), the important players and generals (Grant, Lee, McClellan and others), as well as the weaponry, the unsung heroes, and a wealth of fascinating, little-known details in what is the definitive, one-volume history of the momentous struggle between the Confederacy and the Union.

The first one-volume survey of the American Revolution that is both objective and comprehensive, this outstanding narrative history traces the growth of a conflict that inexorably set the American colonies on the road to independence. Offering a spirited chronicle of the war itself -- the campaigns and strategies, the leaders on both sides, the problems of fielding and sustaining an army, and of maintaining morale -- Stokesbury also brings the reader to the Peace of Paris in 1783 and into the miltarily exhausted, financially ruined yet victorious United States as it emerged to create a workable national system.

A Short History of World War II is essentially a military history, but it reaches from the peace settlements of World War I to the drastically altered postwar world of the late 1940's.

Lucidly written and eminently readable, it is factual and accurate enough to satisfy professional historians. A Short History of World War II will appeal equally to the general reader, the veteran who fought in the War, and the student interested in understanding the contemporary political world.