The Shortest History of War by Gwynne Dyer offers both an excellent overview of that history as well as working definitions of what qualifies as war and the elements that go into making for war.

The early history is what many readers will recognize as warfare while the more modern (but not contemporary) history is that same concept on a larger and ever more destructive scale. It is in the recent history of war where Dyer excels. This is also where the various aspects of why and how we decide on war become paramount. Like any rational being he hopes and wants to find ways to minimize (and ideally eliminate) war, yet he also knows from experience (reserve officer, lecturer of war studies, etc) that war will not easily, if ever, be eliminated.

While some show their need to compensate for their shortcomings (figurative and literal, no doubt) by mistakenly claiming entire chapters are nothing but subjective "fluff," don't let their limited reading comprehension abilities sway you. Analysis is not purely subjective, particularly when supported by statistics and multiple research studies. Dyer certainly offers some opinions, but most of what he offers is analysis based on facts (dirty word to some).

For those who want a short history of warfare as well as an up-to-date assessment of where we are now in relation to potentially devastating warfare, this is an excellent place to start. In fact, if you mainly just want that basic framework, this is all you will need. There are good notes at the end that both provide the sources for all the "subjective" analysis and offer direction for further research.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )

As the title suggests, a highly compressed history of large-scale human conflict. It traces our bloody path, beginning with the egalitarian, inter-tribal warfare of the hunter-gatherers and the democratic phalanx formations of the earliest city states, predated on by cut-throat nomadic raiders. It continues through the limited war and professional armies of the middle ages and culminates in the apotheosis of balance-of-power conflict, total war and world war in the modern period.
For me the most interesting ideas are those describing how a balance-of-power system delivers regular, all-consuming conflicts that draw all major powers in the world into increasingly ruinous confrontation. The contemporary twist of nuclear weapons creates a convincing cliff-hanger, leaving the world hanging over the precipice, decades overdue for a really disastrous conflict.
Some of Dyer's analyses of more recent phenomena are pretty interesting: like the few notable successes and otherwise endemic failures of grassroots revolutionary movements. Sometimes his appraisal is dismissive, in particular of Islamism, as a force in both politics and warfare. I don't think that he adequately engages with the complex and wide-ranging praxis between colonial powers and local Islamic movements. It's one of the major sources of conflict in the modern world and, in a book on war, deserves better.
An easy to read book, full of insights into the way human aggression works, this little tome offers an intellectual framework to contextualise a lot of the other military history that you may have read.