Author Description

Contributors from economics, literature, and the arts as well as from military, social, and political history ask what social and cultural change means, what the nature of total war is, how wars come to happen, and what the consequences of war are. The 15 essays are reprinted from journals or other anthologies mostly of the last half of the 20th century, but ranging from 1941 to 2000. The volume and the Open University course for which it was designed as a reader, suggest a new approach to understanding social change by defining ten overlapping areas such as social geography and national cohesion, rather than dealing with broad shifts in power relations. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)