Empty Trenches

For historians, debating the causes of wars is a kind of endless intramural sport. Less common are debates over the causes of peace. Now James J. Sheehan, a professor of history at Stanford and former president of the American Historical Association, has written a new thematic history of twentieth-century Europe that is framed around the question of peace. He tries to explain why Europe, a continent long plagued by war, has been at peace since the middle of the...

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