Between Peace and War: The Nature of International Crisis

By Richard Ned Lebow

Book Overview

"Lebow has produced a significant work on international crises and their relationship to international politics. His integration of history and international relations theory is particularly laudatory, and he draws some important conclusions concerning deterrence theory and crisis management."--Jerel A. Rosati, American Political Science Review.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801823110
• ISBN13: 9780801823114
• Release Date: March 1981
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 0.6" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

The finest book ever written in political science.

I studied with the author as a graduate student, and while he is a prolific writer with many fine books to his credit, this one is his magnum opus. When I questioned his as to why he did not produce any other books like this, he mentioned that he had no forthcoming plans to spend 11 years writing a single book. Lebow deals with the most profound issues - the proximate and invariant causes of conflict. He begins his argument with Thucydides and finishes with nuclear weapons. He builds soundly on first principles and his final chapter is entitled "Thucydides Rebutted." I have never seen a book with so much though put into it (including Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and the Philosophical Investigations for lovers of arcana). He combs through nearly a hundred cases from every possible direction, synthesizing the disciplines of history and political science in a truly unique fashion. This is one of those books that falls into the category "If I were marooned on a desert island and I could only have one book..." No serious scholar of history or politics should be without it.