This is a concise, comprehensive, and scholarly work. Burns (emer., history, California State Univ., Los Angeles) traces arms control efforts back to the Punic Wars, and in some cases beyond. The most common types of efforts have been imposed on the vanquished by the victors. However, the Treaty of Versailles established a multilateral body to enforce its terms, the League of Nations, but it was easily subverted. The problems with arms control agreements are trying to distinguish between offensive and defensive weaponry, state sovereignty, technological change, and verification. One of the more interesting parts of the book deals with chemical weapons. Again, the origins go back to antiquity in attempts to control or outlaw such weapons as Greek fire, the poisoning of wells, and other chemical and biological agents. There have been many diplomatic attempts, all of which the author includes, to outlaw such weapons. But, they are still available and used. More successful have been attempts to control nuclear weapons, perhaps because these attempts have largely been bilateral. This is an excellent reference book and should be acquired by academic libraries. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate and graduate collections.

Choice Reviews

Burns chronicles the progression of arms negotiations, allowing readers to visualize the intricacy of arms control and grasp the difficulties of finding common ground in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Whether the world's diplomatic efforts will be successful remains to be seen. Still, a major contribution. … Highly recommended.

Choice Reviews

Written for anyone interested in arms control and disarmament issues as well as military history, this book reviews the historic means and techniques for arms control such as demilitarization, regulation of arms manufacturing, stabilizing international environments and the outlawing of war. A section also reviews nuclear weaponry before and after the Cold War and the emergence of biological and bacterial delivery systems.

Reference and Research Book News

Richard Dean Burns’s The Evolution of Arms Control is at once a timely and significant contribution to the literature of the subject, written in plain English by one of America’s leading historian of arms control and disarmament. This thoughtful book will provide both generalists and specialists a better understanding of the multidimensionality of the most important issue of our age. All politicians and their advisers should give this work a careful read as they consider how their policies will enhance or inhibit the development of a more stable, secure world.

Joseph M. Siracusa, Deputy Dean of Global Studies, The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University

With President Obama and former Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger calling for ‘A World Without Nuclear Weapons,’ arms control is in the news more than in decades. What will happen? With its well-documented facts and chronologies, Richard Dean Burns’s highly readable history of arms control will help the reader navigate the difficult waters of international diplomacy and gain new insight into where the Obama administration may succeed.

Hon. Philip E. Coyle III, Senior Advisor, World Security Institute; Former Assistant Secretary of Defense