War
This guide includes resources on the history and ethics of war, as well as information on specific topics. Links to research guides on major wars are included. We encourage you to visit the specific war guide for information related to various sub-topics related to that conflict and time period. This is an ongoing project. As such, additional content will be added throughout the semester.
- Military and Government Collection This link opens in a new window
The Military and Government Collection offers current literature for military members, analysts, policymakers, students and researchers. You will find full-text journals and periodicals pertaining to all branches of the military and government.
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Information is provided for all major wars and military leaders. - American History, 1493-1945 This link opens in a new window
American History, 1493-1945 is a unique collection of American history documents from the earliest settlers to the mid-twentieth century. This database includes primary source documents, including images, chronologies, and documents, from 1493 to 1945.
- Britannica Original Sources This link opens in a new window
Britannica Original Sources proves your access to primary source documents from history, literature, science, law, politics, religion, and more. Original Sources gives you instant access to an extensive, continually increasing collection of thousands of classic, primary reference sources in 12 subject areas.
Journals
- War & SocietyWar & Society publishes scholarly articles on the causes, experience and impact of war, particularly on the broader relationships between warfare and society.
Archives
- Archive of Modern American WarfareThe mission of the Archive of Modern American Warfare is to encourage, promote, support and enhance the long term study and preservation of all aspects of America's diplomatic and military experiences and involvements on a global scale, beginning in 1975 and continuing to the present. Through this, the Archive strives to help researchers develop a better understanding of America’s modern military experiences.
- Center for American War Letters ArchivesThe Center for American War Letters Archives actively preserves and promotes the research of original correspondence and other materials from all American conflicts; from the American War for Independence through the present day. This includes letters, postcards, V-Mail and email, or any other medium upon which correspondence was kept, as well as supplementary materials including photographs, ephemera, or realia sent to or from American service members, their families, and all those involved in American conflicts at home or abroad. Also found in the collection are materials not sent but collected during wartime; including journals and diaries, newspaper clippings and scrapbooks, as well as alternate forms of media including audio and video recording.
Streaming Media
- War and Human Nature: Crash CourseIn which John Green teaches you about war! Specifically, John talks about whether humanity is naturally warlike, hard-wired to kill, or if perhaps war is a cultural construct. John will talk about the Hobbes versus Rousseau debate, the effects that war has on human social orders, and the effects that war has on individuals. So is war human nature? Watch and find out what we have to say about it.
- War and Civilization: Crash Course World HistoryIn which John Green investigates war, and what exactly it may or may not be good for. Was war a result of human beings organizing into larger and more complex agricultural social orders, or did war maybe create agriculture and "civilization?" It's hard to know for sure, but it's sure fun to think about.
Perspectives
Blood Rites
An ALA Notable Book A New York Times Notable Book InBlood Rites, Barbara Ehrenreich confronts the mystery of the human attraction to violence: What draws our species to war and even makes us see it as a kind of sacred undertaking? Blood Rites takes us on an original journey from the elaborate human sacrifices of the ancient world to the carnage and holocaust of twentieth-century "total war." Sifting through the fragile records of prehistory, Ehrenreich discovers the wellspring of war in an unexpected place--not in a "killer instinct" unique to the malesof our species but in the blood rites early humans performed to reenact their terrifying experience of predation by stronger carnivores. Brilliant in conception, rich in scope, Blood Rites is a monumental work that will transform our understanding of the greatest single threat to human life.