What role has war played in the historical and contemporary formation of societies across the globe? How have different classes and communities been impacted, and how have different civilisations over the last 2,500 years commemorated and remembered war?

Applying their expertise to a theme throughout history, 54 experts answer these ambitious questions in the first authoritative survey of the subject from antiquity to the present day. Incorporating perspectives from history, politics, literature, cultural studies, anthropology and sociology, they look at how war has emerged out of different social and political climates around the world.

Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six.

The six volumes cover: 1. – Antiquity (500 BCE - 800 CE); 2. – Medieval Age (800 - 1450); 3. –Renaissance (1450 - 1650) ; 4. – Enlightenment (1650 - 1800); 5. – Age of Empire (1800 - 1920); 6. – Modern Age (1920 – 2000+).

Themes (and chapter titles) are: class, race and gender; immigration and integration; religion; environment; culture of war: high and popular; civil war and ethnic cleansing; confidence game: intelligence, deception, and subterfuge; ritual, commemoration, and memory.

The page extent is approximately 1,728 pp with c. 240 illustrations. Each volume opens with notes on contributors, a series preface and an introduction, and concludes with notes, bibliography and an index.

Special introductory offer (valid up to 3 months after publication): £395 / $550 (full price: £440 / $610)

The Cultural Histories Series
A Cultural History of War is part of The Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully-searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access (see www.bloomsburyculturalhistory.com).

Mary Kathryn Barbier is Professor of History at Mississippi State University, USA. She is the author of several books, including Spies, Lies, and Citizenship: The Hunt for Nazi Criminals (2017), D-Day Deception: Operation Fortitude and the Normandy Invasion (2009) and Kursk 1943: The Greatest Tank Battle Ever Fought (2002). She is also the co-editor of America and the Vietnam War (2010; with Andrew Wiest and Glenn Robins), Culture, Power, and Security: New Directions in the History of National and International Security (2012; with Richard V. Damms) and the War in History journal.

Dennis Showalter was Professor Emeritus of History at Colorado College, USA. He is the author of several books, including Armor and Blood: The Battle of Kursk, The Turning Point of World War II (2013), Patton and Rommel: Men Of War in the Twentieth Century (2005) and Tannenberg: Clash of Empires 1914 (1991), which won the American Historical Association's Paul M. Birdsall Prize. He was the Founding Editor of the War in History journal and Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Bibliographies Online: Military History. Professor Showalter was also President of the Society for Military History between 1997 and 2000.