In this brilliantly readable and controversial book, Britain's most distinguished and widely-read military historian provides not merely a history of warfare but an analysis of world history, and the role that man's impulse to war has played in it. After thirty years of reading, research, teaching and commentating on military affairs, A History of Warfare brings together in a single volume the themes explored in such earlier best-selling books of his as The Face of Battle and The Mask of Command and adds to them the insights gained in his visits to many of the world's major battlefields, a lifetime's friendship with soldiers of different armies and experience as a war correspondent in the Lebanon and the Gulf. John Keegan believes that the history of warfare has for too long been written either as specialist study of 'war as the continuation of politics' or as a horror story. Its place at the heart of human cultures and the enormous variety of forms it takes in different societies has too often been ignored. The narrative of the book moves from the strangely ritualistic combat of the Stone Age peoples to the nihilistic destructiveness of mass warfare in the modern age, in an historical sweep which covers human aggression in variety of contexts: the rule-bound battles of Roman legions, the power of an 'idea' in warmaking by Islam, the unrestrained aggressiveness of the steppe horse peoples from Attila to Genghis Khan and the attempts of Chinese civilisations to attain its ends without violence. The author demonstrates how particular cultures and their styles of warmaking go hand in hand. He also attaches his analysis to the great changes in military technology - the discoveries of bronze and iron, the taming of the horse to the chariot and riding, the introduction of gunpowder and the mobilisation of science and industry to produce the weapons of mass destruction of the twentieth century, culminating in the development of the atomic bomb. A History of Warfare stresses that warmaking, for all its destructiveness, has been an inescapable feature of human culture since organised societies emerged. It also recognises, however, that man has consistently sought to limit the effects of his own capacity for violence and that now, in the nuclear age, he has no alternative to making limitation effective if he is to survive.

约翰·基根（John Keegan，1934—2012）

享誉全球的战争史学者

战后英语世界头号军事史权威

被评为“我们时代最卓越、最博学的战争历史学家！”

1934年生于伦敦，长期执教于英国桑赫斯特皇家军事学家，之后担任《每日电讯报》防务主编。他是英国皇家历史学会和皇家文学学会成员，大英帝国勋章（OBE）获得者，凭借在“军事史领域的杰出贡献”，被授予塞缪尔·艾略特·莫里森奖（Samuel Eliot Prize）。1994年诺曼底登陆50周年纪念日，他受比尔·克林顿邀请参观白宫；世纪之交，英国女王授予他千禧年百名荣誉人物勋章。

基根专注于战争史研究，著有二十多部作品，读者对他的每一部作品的期待，不下于哈利·波特迷对J.K.罗琳新书的期待。《战斗的面目》和《战争史》是基根的经典代表著作。《战斗的面目》出版于1976年，使他一举成名，成为桑赫斯特学院最引人关注的天才作家。《战争史》耗费基根40年心血，这部集大成之作获得1993年首届达夫·库珀奖（Duff Cooper Prize），被评为《星期日泰晤士报》年度图书，至今仍然雄踞在英美等国畅销榜的前列。