What motivates individuals to take up arms against their government? What types of states have historically been more prone to internal conflicts? In Civil Wars: Internal Struggles, Global Consequences Marie Olson Lounsbery and Frederic Pearson explore these questions and present a comprehensive analysis of the causes, consequences, and management potential regarding civil wars throughout the world.

Clearly the best single volume treatment of civil war now available, Civil Wars is an admirable synthesis and analysis of theoretical, historical, statistical, and case study literatures. Useful as a textbook at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level. -- Roy Licklider, Rutgers University Olson Lounsbery and Pearson have written an accessible and comprehensive treatment of civil war. Their approach to crafting the argument-with breakout boxes and historical anecdotes-makes it a good fit for the classroom. The book is nicely organized and draws inference from a combination of empirical patterns and case descriptions. -- Patrick Regan, Binghamton University An excellent addition to the literature, Civil Wars is an indispensable tool for any student or scholar of the topic. It is a much-needed study of civil wars and the scholarship devoted to them. Pearson and Olson Lounsbery do a masterful job of highlighting the most important facets of the phenomena and surveying the extensive academic literature on each one. In spite of the breadth of the subject, the prose remains extremely readable-almost conversational-and will appeal to readers with an extensive background in the subject and to those without. The authors should be applauded for making a difficult subject more comprehensible. -- Andrea Kathryn Talentino, Drew University

About the Author
Marie Olson Lounsbery is Assistant Professor of Political Science at East Carolina University. She pioneered approaches to teaching about civil wars and is the author of several articles on civil war and conflict resolution. She has been involved in several research projects examining the causes and resolution of civil wars and ethnopolitical violence. Frederic Pearson is the Director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies and Professor of Political Science at Wayne State University. He is the author of The Global Spread of Arms (Westview, 1994), Arms and Warfare (University of South Carolina Press, 1994), and Arms and Ethnic Conflict (Rowman and Littlefield, 2001). In addition, he has twice been a Fulbright Scholar and had served as consultant to the US Commission on National Security.


Book Information
ISBN 9780802096722
Author Marie Olson Lounsbery
Format Paperback
Page Count 272
Imprint University of Toronto Press
Publisher University of Toronto Press
Weight(grams) 380g
Dimensions(mm) 230mm * 153mm * 17mm