Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano , by Paolo Uccello, c. 1435–1460. National Gallery, London.

Niccolò Mauruzi da Tolentino at the Battle of San Romano, by Paolo Uccello, c. 1435–1460. National Gallery, London.

States of War

Volume 1, Number 1 | winter 2008

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Preamble

The Gulf of Time

By Lewis H. Lapham

An introduction to Lapham’s Quarterly.

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Leonidas at Thermopylae, by Jacques-Louis David, 1814.

The Persian Way of War

By Tom Holland

Unlike the Greeks, Xerxes viewed war as more than a simple matter of strategy. Rather, it was a means of flaunting global mastery.

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Map

Fringe Benefits

Inventions, countries, and styles that came out of war.

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1945 | Potsdam

The Price Paid for Defeat

There are no alternatives.More

1944 | New York

E.E. Cummings Told Him

A poem on the price of war.More

1917 | Baghdad

The Gift of Freedom

Absolute and supreme liberators.More

Charts & Graphs

Lock and Load

Rates of fire for weapons throughout the ages.

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Black and white photograph of English poet Wilfred Owen.

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. War is hell.

—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1879

Emperor of India Ashoka.

Former prime minister of Japan Murayama Tomiichi.

Ashoka & Murayama Tomiichi

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