A concise, engaging volume that will be a must-read for scholars of armed conflict. Tracing US reliance on torture from war in the Philippines, to Vietnam, to the contemporary war on terror, d'Ambruoso achieves a remarkable feat: a crisply stated theoretical argument that nevertheless rejects false parsimony. Examining key decision moments across three conflicts, he explains the puzzling persistence of an atrocity that both courts international opprobrium and (often)
fails to achieve its ostensible goals. The conflicts d'Ambruoso foregrounds are well known, yet d'Ambruoso brings new perspectives to the comparison—a significant feat.
William L. d'Ambruoso is a fellow with the International Security Program and the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He previously taught courses on wartime violence and international security at Bates College.