Book recommendation: The Costs of War At amazon.co.uk and amazon.com (has reviews) While I can't vouch for the Truth of the contents therein, the visions presented are remarkable and more than worth a read. It's a collection of essays looking into the mechanisms of US warfare: Motives, tactics and ultimate costs to civilized society both in the US and "the other side". It starts with some chapters of the Civil War which are decent, but the book really gets good when you get to the chapters on Cuba, Philippines and World War 1. A very interesting thing to note from the book: A key grey eminence in the clique promoting the US welfare-warfare state was JP Morgan. Guess which investment bank had most of its offices in the high stories of one of the World Trade Center buildings. It seems bin Ladens choice of targets was less than random. The Pentagon was an obvious one, but - it seems there were strong grievances against occupants of the towers as well.