A quick and dirty guide to war: Briefings on present and potential wars [Paperback]

James F Dunnigan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1986

A completely revised and updated guide to the wars, insurgencies, and hot spots facing the world in the 1990s and beyond includes analyses of the situations in the former Yugoslavia, the Persian Gulf, and China.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James F. Dunnigan is the author of many books and over a hundred historical simulations. He has been a lecturer to the State Department, the CIA, and the U.S. Army War College. He lives in New York City. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 415 pages
• Publisher: Quill; Updated ed edition (1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688062563
• ISBN-13: 978-0688062569
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,750,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be on every pundit's desk, well-worn, February 8, 2009

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Reader in Matawan - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Quick & Dirty Guide to War: Briefings on Present & Potential Wars, 4th Edition (Paperback)

On their Strategy Page website, analyst James Dunnigan and (retired) Colonel Austin Bay state their mission: to view news as history. In this spirit they give us the fourth edition of A Quick and Dirty Guide to War.

It is a compilation on the many wars, conflict, tensions, and potential tensions around the world today. They provide the necessary history, the driving issues today, and a complete list of the various actors, state and non-state including people, political parties, "popular" movements, and terror and criminal organizations. Charts (in a uniform format) describe economic, political, and historical interest of the parties involved, near and far, as well as their ability to intervene. They follow these with predictions: not single predictions, but possible outcomes with ranges of probability. And their record on predictions, from the first three editions, is quite good.

Most readers (excluding perhaps professional analysts and foreign affairs experts) will find here much they have never heard of and much that was mentioned once or twice in the news years ago, but never given follow-up. For them--for us--this book is the cure for our popular education and haphazard news media.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dated but Factual, May 11, 2004

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Avid Reader (Franklin, Tn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quick and Dirty Guide to War: Briefings on Present and Potential Wars (Paperback)

This is more than a book on weapons and wars. It is also one on strategy, politics, ideology and power. It concentrates on the military end but does not neglect all the accompanying subject matter.

Several of the conflicts are still ongoing - in fact almost all of them are: Sri Lanka, India-Pakistan, Burma, the almost endless conflicts in Africa (the Sudan and Zairre lead the pack with total deaths so far), the Mideast conflict. This is pre-breakup of the Soviet Union though that was strongly suggested.

He also discusses future possiblities of outbreaks, many of which are still pertinent today. What is missing is ideology, the driving force behind the greatest mass murders in human history - China, Russia, Germany, Zairre, Sudan, Rwanda...in some ways the problems are unsolvable, dependent upon geography and resource allocation. One only wishes that the book could be updated to the presetn.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the only book on FUTURE history., July 24, 2001

By 

Bruce D. Clayton (Mariposa, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Quick and Dirty Guide to War: Briefings on Present and Potential Wars (Paperback)

This is a book about future wars. Who will fight, where, over what, how it will probably turn out, and when it might happen, for fifty or more perpetual hots spots around the world. People fighting in the Balkans have been repeating the same war for 1300 years and nobody ever wins. Roughly the same for Iraq and Iran, England and France, France and Germany, Japan and Korea... you name it. Peace is only an interlude while the endless war sleeps for a while. It will break out again, in the same place, over the same issues, with the same results. It is only a matter of time.

I wish they had taught us about this in high school. Every American should read this book and keep it handy.