Author (and Marine Corps Col.) Thomas Xavier Hammes didn’t invent the concept of “Fourth Generation Warfare” (4GW) but popularized it and made it a subject of cocktail party conversation a couple years back. The book has some good information on late 20th Century insurgencies, specifically the Sandanista and Al-Aqsa uprisings.

Overall though, although Hammes book isn't meant to be a complete compendium of 4GW conflicts, I did feel that his description and defense of 4GW warfare as something unique to our times did ignore a lot of history and counterevidence - much of which, for example, could be found in the history of Eastern Europe from 1919 to 1939.

At its time, it was a timely dose of history and seasoned reasoning about counterinsurgency warfare at the beginning of the 20th Century. But now the book seems a lot dated since the 2004 Iraqi “surge.” ( )

Insurgents are patient. I don't see how one "wins." We aren't patient.

The writing in this book is very clunky. But the information and argument have stayed with me.