"This is in many respects perhaps the most important book that has been published recently. Its intellectual integrity, its humane pathos, its analytical force are exceptional. The title gives only an inadequate indication of the contents; it is at the same time an economic, technological, and cultural history of the rise of industrial civilization. This history is focused on the interconnection between war and industrial and technological progress--a single-mindedness of purpose which breaks through the well-established framework of traditional historiography and opens new insights into...