How Civil Wars Start

Nov 17, 2024 7:10 PM

Author:Barbara F. Walter

Sunday Times Smart Thinking Book of the Year 2022 • New York Times Bestseller

• WINNER OF THE GLOBAL POLICY INSTITUTE AWARD • BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Financial Times, The Times, Esquire, Prospect

'When one of the world's leading scholars of civil war tells us that a country is on the brink of violent conflict, we should pay attention. This is an important book' Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die

Civil wars are the biggest danger to world peace today - this book shows us why they happen, and how to avoid them.

We are now living in the world's greatest era of civil wars. While violence has declined worldwide, major civil wars are now being fought in countries including Iraq, Syria and Libya, and smaller civil wars are being fought in India and Malaysia. Even countries we thought could never experience another civil war - such as the USA, Sweden and Ireland - are showing signs of unrest. So how can we stop them?

In How Civil Wars Start, acclaimed expert Professor Barbara F. Walter, who has advised on political violence everywhere from the CIA to the U.S. Senate to the United Nations, explains the rise of civil wars and the conditions that create them - not least when countries are not quite democratic. As democracies across the world backslide and citizens become more polarised, civil wars will become even more widespread and last longer than they have in the past - but this urgent and important book shows us a path back toward peace.

Reviews

When one of the world's leading scholars of civil war tells us that a country is on the brink of violent conflict, we should pay attention . . . This is an important book

—— Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, authors of How Democracies Die

An absorbing guide ... this book performs a valuable service

—— Sunday Times

How Civil Wars Start is a stop sign for us. What an imperative book for our time. Read and act

—— Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist

A bracing manual . . . . Indispensable

—— Financial Times

Like those who spoke up clearly about the dangers of global warming decades ago, Walter delivers a grave message that we ignore at our peril

—— David Remnick , The New Yorker

Polemical and essential

—— James A. Robinson, co-author of Why Nations Fail

A vivid, compelling book on a globally vital issue. Timely, important and original

—— Professor Richard English, author of Does Terrorism Work? A History

Barbara F. Walter has drawn on decades of experience and unparalleled expertise to write a powerful and indispensable book. How Civil Wars Start brilliantly illuminates the history of civil wars and the profound dangers to our union today, serving as both a warning about the stakes in our politics and a call to action for those who want to preserve multiethnic democracy and the values that America is supposed to stand for

—— Ben Rhodes, author of After the Fall

A glorious resurrection of one of the most misrepresented queens of England . . . finally, thanks to Leanda de Lisle's meticulous research, she has a biography worthy of her fascinating life

—— AMANDA FOREMAN, author of A World on Fire

Henrietta Maria's remarkable life is recounted with gusto in this sharp, sparky book... it makes vivid use of recent work on her court and queenship, brings people and personalities to the fore and will be a particular delight to those new to the period

—— ANNA KEAY , Spectator

Leanda de Lisle has brilliantly overturned nearly four centuries of misogynistic, religiously bigoted and politically motivated myths about Henrietta Maria, who now emerges as a fascinating, fearless, but ill-fated woman, wife and mother. This is revisionist history at its absolute best

—— ANDREW ROBERTS, author of George III: The Life of Britain's Most Misunderstood Monarch

A formidable historian

—— ALLAN MALLINSON , Country Life

With supreme skill and style, Leanda de Lisle provides not only a welcome revision of Henrietta Maria's reputation, but also a revival of her fierce energy and a reanimation of the entire age. A superb and vital biography

—— JESSIE CHILDS, author of The Siege of Loyalty House

A captivating, richly detailed historical tale that shines a light on the hidden genius of an extraordinary woman

—— Woman's Own

This is popular history of the finest kind, vivid, immediate, well researched and telling a compelling story. It is also serves the first duty of biography, by making its subject more wholly understandable than before

—— RONALD HUTTON, author of The Witch

Leanda de Lisle's beautifully written and endlessly fascinating new biography of Henrietta Maria brings one of the 17th century's most misunderstood women to glorious life . . . This salutary and important book restores her to her rightful place as one of the most important figures of her time

—— ALEXANDER LARMAN, author of The Crown in Crisis

If the Stuarts are having their time in the sun at last, then Leanda de Lisle is one of the reasons they are. Masterful and pleasurable about a transformative century and a neglected, underestimated woman's role in it -- what more can one want from history?

—— SARAH FRASER, author of The Prince Who Would Be King: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart

A fascinating book about a fascinating woman -- Henrietta Maria's story deserves to be better known, and this book brings her completely alive

—— FRANCES QUINN, author of The Smallest Man

Henietta Maria's perspective allows this book to become something much more than mere analysis of politics and war. De Lisle understands that history is a story of people; she possesses a visceral understanding of the emotions that swirled inside Henrietta Maria

—— The Times, *Book of the Week*

[A] thrilling story... a revisionist life of one of the most compelling and controversial women in British history... a book, like a life, should be measured against its own mission. And in this - to tell the story of Henrietta Maria's extraordinary life from her own perspective - Leanda de Lisle triumphs where her subject could not

—— The Critic

Lucid, entertaining and combative revisionist biography

—— Paul Lay, author of Providence Lost

A triumph of a book which will revise opinion of this 'reviled' queen

—— Annie Whitehead, author of Women in Power

Thanks to Leanda de Lisle's new biography, Henrietta Maria can finally answer the charges laid against her. In debunking and deconstructing these myths de Lisle gives an account of the politics of the time

—— Times Literary Supplement

The much-maligned Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I, is thrillingly reassessed in de Lisle’s lyrical biography

—— Daily Telegraph

Harrowing but excruciatingly funny

—— New Statesman, *Books of the Year*

[A] blazing debut... Electric from page one

—— Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*

Scabrously funny... Were his account a novel, you might accuse it of being too far-fetched

—— Guardian, *Books of the Year*

His remarkable, funny, arrestingly well-written memoir brings to mind Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels, but is also entirely, exhilaratingly its own thing

—— The Times

Original Sins is a memoir that reads like a novel; a brilliant one. Matt Rowland Hill's struggle to overcome the perfect storm of his upbringing and addiction makes for a great story, but it's the blend of artistry, wit and skilfully timed stabs of brutality that make it such a vivid and thrilling experience. It's not that I didn't want to put the book down, more that it wouldn't release me from its grip

—— Chris Power

Brilliant... lively, engaging and extremely well written - scrupulously, painfully honest... sharply funny

—— Pandora Sykes, Substack

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