Coming to Terms with War

Victor Davis Hanson offers a scholarly look at the "art of war." Near the end of his piece, under "Studying War: Where to Start" he provides a good list of sources that readers will find useful as an introduction to the subject.

Here's an excerpt:

Further, the sixties had ushered in a utopian view of society antithetical to serious thinking about war. Government, the military, business, religion, and the family had conspired, the new Rousseauians believed, to warp the naturally peace-loving individual. Conformity and coercion smothered our innately pacifist selves. To assert that wars broke out because bad men, in fear or in pride, sought material advantage or status, or because good men had done too little to stop them, was now seen as antithetical to an enlightened understanding of human nature. 'What difference does it make,' in the words of the much-quoted Mahatma Gandhi, 'to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?'

http://www.city-journal.org/html/17_3_military_history.html