Gambling on War

Roger L. Ransom is Distinguished Professor of History and Economics, Emeritus at the University of California, Riverside. He is best known for his work with Richard Sutch on the American Civil War and his many publications include the books One Kind of Freedom (co-authored with Richard Sutch Cambridge, 2001), Conflict and Compromise (Cambridge, 1990) and The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been (2005). He was the president of the Economic History Association in 2005, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the distinguished teaching award from the University of California, Riverside. He also won the Arthur H. Cole Prize from the Economic History Association and the Clio Can Award from the Cliometric Society.

'World War I became a tragedy when victory became an end in itself rather than a means of achieving some prewar objective. In his lucid and insightful Gambling on War, Roger L. Ransom draws on history and economics to explain why that happened, why World War I upended the world's institutions, and why its tragic effects persist even today.' Philip T. Hoffman, author of Why Did Europe Conquer the World?

• Prologue; 1. Confidence, fear, and a propensity to gamble; 2. Otto von Bismarck and the changing paradigm of war; 3. Schlieffen's gamble; 4. A war of attrition; 5. Economies at war; 6. War and revolution; 7. The last gamble; 8. The chaos of victory; Epilogue: the tragedy of a world war.