Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4879935 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10-01
• Binding: Hardcover
• 650 pages

From School Library Journal
Grade 10 Up—Aiming to present "clear, essential, and accurate historical information on major and minor wars, revolts, revolutions, rebellions, uprisings, invasions and insurrections," the third edition of this well-reviewed reference source (the second edition was published in 1999) contains some additions and other changes that reflect the upsurge of international and domestic terrorism and violence. About 50 of the 1850 entries have been modified. Each alphabetical section begins with a full-page black-and-white painting or drawing depicting an event or artifact covered in that section. Entries include the dates of events and a brief summary of their causes, effects, and consequences. The straightforward writing style emphasizes basic facts rather than arguments justifying or opposing each conflict. This, along with the occasional cross-references and helpful and complete general and geographic indexes, makes the encyclopedia accessible to most students. However, the work understates many of the genocidal campaigns and terrorist attacks that have taken place in history. For example, the Holocaust is only mentioned in one sentence in the entry on World War II, and the slaughter of two million Cambodians by Pol Pot's regime is deeply embedded in "Kampuchean Civil War of 1978–1998." Not a necessary purchase for libraries that have an earlier edition.—Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San Diego
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Plenty of new conflicts have occurred since the second edition of this dictionary appeared in 1999, not only the war in Iraq but the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the Chechen Civil War of 1999-2002, the Macedonian Civil War of 2001, and the ongoing Palestinian uprising, just to name a few. Entries, 50 of them new or extensively revised, briefly describe more than 1,800 wars over a period of more than 4,000 years. In addition to the general index, a "Geographical Index" provides useful points of access. Though not as comprehensive as the Encyclopedia of Wars (Facts On File, 2005) or International Encyclopedia of Military History (Routledge, 2006), this is now the most current among the several single-volume reference works on war. Mary Ellen Quinn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The Book Report, January/February 2000
This is a worthy and easy reference to use where world history is studied and researched.

Customer Reviews

2,000 Wars over 4,000 Years in 621 Pages Plux Indexes
Now in its third edition with a double handfull of new wars added, you could easily get the impression that warfare is the natural state of mankind with peace being only a few short interludes before the killing starts again.

This book covers about 2,000 wars spread over about 4,000 years and covered in 621 pages. That means that each war can only get a short amount of space. All of World War II gets covered in about 5 pages. As such this is an excellent reference when you need to look up some reference to an unknown war such as the Perak War or the Damascene War. It's usually enough to let you know where things fit into history.

I can help but have just a couple of complaints. There is a Geographical Index, and a General Index. I'd like to also see an index by time line. Further there are some references in places that could stand a little more explanation. For instance the closing sentence in the writeup on the Peninsular War says (in part) that it 'detonated revolutions throughout Latin America.' That would be a good place to put in the names of the revolutions it was talking about.

All in all, my complaints are minor. This is a magnificant work with an incredible amount of information.

The best history book
This is a fantastic book. Practically every war of any kind is included (within the limits of historical information). Since most of the history of the world changes due to wars, it's basically the history of the world in one volume. Re the comment on dates by Mr. Clark: come on, no researcher worth his or her salt is going to use a book like this for a reference. This is for the layperson who wants a concise history, and it delivers very well.

Dictionary of Wars
The information concerning dates of wars are in question. Due to the inefficiency of the work relating to dates, this publication can be costly to a researcher.