SOURCE: Grier, Peter. “Probing the Cultural Roots of War.” Christian Science Monitor (4 January 1994): 13.

In the following review, Grier compares and contrasts War and Anti-War with A History of Warfare by John Keegan.

Over the centuries, the battles of different wars have often been fought on the same patch of ground. The most pronounced example of this curious pattern, notes John Keegan in his new book A History of Warfare, is Edirne, in European Turkey. Fully 15 battles or sieges are known to have occurred at this historic crossroads—the first between the Roman Emperor Constantine and his rival Licinius, in AD 323, and the last between the decaying Ottoman Turkish empire and invading Serbs in July 1913.

The constraints of geography are a major reason for this repetition. But so is the dismaying persistence of warfare as an institution. Romans, Goths, Bulgars, Crusaders, and various Byzantine and Balkan factions have all...