War: The New Edition

Tim Cook is the World War I historian at the Canadian War Museum. He is
the author of No Place to Run: The Canadian Corps and Gas Warfare in the
First World War and Clio’s Warriors: Canadian Historians and the
Writing of the World Wars.

Gwynne Dyer is one of Canada’s best-known commentators on military
matters. An iconoclast with a doctorate in military history, he climbed
down from the ivory tower of academia and embraced the mass media of
films, radio, and newspapers. At one time, his newspaper column was
published in over 200 papers in more than 40 countries. He has recently
turned his formidable intellectual firepower on the war in Iraq, where
he has questioned and condemned military actions. He is perhaps best
known for his seven-part National Film Board television series, War,
which was first telecast in Canada in 1983. The supporting history of
the same name was a bestseller, and this original text has been revised
in War: The New Edition.

The first edition was written during the height of the Cold War, with
President Ronald Reagan revitalizing American military efforts and
defence spending to bring down the “evil empire.” The end result
would have been a war in which thousands of nuclear mushroom clouds
would have blotted out life on earth. The deep gloom of that period
infused the original film and book, and has been toned down in this new
edition. But War is about far more than the Cold War: it is an ambitious
romp through military history, from its earliest form to the wars that
we witness on our television screens today.

The author makes audacious, far-reaching statements that will likely
have specialists’ teeth gnashing, but he consistently sheds new light
on old topics. At times, there are enormous gaps in the coverage, and
Dyer’s aim is decidedly Western-specific. While there are better
academic surveys of world military history, Dyer has produced a sweeping
story that is highly readable. War is a poignant reminder that although
we may have avoided the daily threat of a Cold War nuclear exchange, the
human race has a long way to go before we eradicate war.