Introduction : confronting civil war -- Part I: Roads from Rome -- Inventing civil war : the Roman tradition -- Remembering civil war : Roman visions -- Part II: Early modern crossroads -- Uncivil civil wars : the seventeenth century -- Civil war in an age of revolutions : the eighteenth century -- Partt III: Paths to the present -- Civilizing civil war : the nineteenth century -- Worlds of civil war : the twentieth century -- Conclusion : civil wars of words

"A highly original history, tracing civil war, the least understood and most intractable form of organized human aggression, from Ancient Rome through the centuries to present day"--