The Shield Of Achilles: War, Peace And The Course Of History

This staggering book - both in depth and weight - takes its title from an elaborate shield created, in Homer's Iliad, by the Greek god Hephaestus, and later eulogized by the poet W H Auden. The shield depicts among many other things a wedding, a marketplace, dancing, athletics, culture and wine-making. The book takes as its subject an equally large arena - the modern state, how it came into being, how it developed, and how it can be expected to change. This is principally a book about law and statecraft, specifically concerned with the relationship between strategy and legal order and how this affects the modern state.

Hardcover. English. Allen Lane. 2002. ISBN: 9780713996166. 960 pp. Good with dw. Book No: 52649