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.

約翰·基根（John Keegan，1934—2012）

享譽全球的戰爭史學者

戰後英語世界頭號軍事史權威

被評為“我們時代最卓越、最博學的戰爭曆史學傢！”

1934年生於倫敦，長期執教於英國桑赫斯特皇傢軍事學傢，之後擔任《每日電訊報》防務主編。他是英國皇傢曆史學會和皇傢文學學會成員，大英帝國勛章（OBE）獲得者，憑藉在“軍事史領域的傑齣貢獻”，被授予塞繆爾·艾略特·莫裏森奬（Samuel Eliot Prize）。1994年諾曼底登陸50周年紀念日，他受比爾·剋林頓邀請參觀白宮；世紀之交，英國女王授予他韆禧年百名榮譽人物勛章。

基根專注於戰爭史研究，著有二十多部作品，讀者對他的每一部作品的期待，不下於哈利·波特迷對J.K.羅琳新書的期待。《戰鬥的麵目》和《戰爭史》是基根的經典代錶著作。《戰鬥的麵目》齣版於1976年，使他一舉成名，成為桑赫斯特學院最引人關注的天纔作傢。《戰爭史》耗費基根40年心血，這部集大成之作獲得1993年首屆達夫·庫珀奬（Duff Cooper Prize），被評為《星期日泰晤士報》年度圖書，至今仍然雄踞在英美等國暢銷榜的前列。