Century of Warfare: Worldwide Conflict from 1900 to the Present Day

Based on a 26-part BBC-TV series, Messenger's book is a broad overview of history's bloodiest century, from the Boer War to the 1994 massacres in Rwanda. Lavishly illustrated, the book covers world wars, wars of national liberation, civil wars, guerrilla wars and the rise of terrorism. Messenger describes the emergence of the submarine, the tank and the military airplane and observes ironically that many of today's conflicts are being fought with weapons technology not very different from that of 1900. The view is by no means restricted to battlefield confrontations. For instance, he discusses the effect on French army morale of the collapse of the medical system and shows how the Second Balkan War of 1913 foreshadowed ethnic rivalries that plague the region to this day. This satisfying account blends perceptive analysis with dramatic narrative. Messenger is a professional military historian and defense analyst and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Britain. Illustrations. (Feb.)