In the contemporary world, war rivals infectious disease as a global cause of morbidity and mortality. Since the end of World War II, there have been at least 160 wars around the world with as many as 25 million (and probably many more) people killed, most of them civilians. Directly or indirectly, war touches the lives of most people on the planet, often with lasting and costly impact. Framed by the holistic and enthnographically grounded theoretical perspective of critical medical anthropology, and more broadly by the political economy of health, this book of essays by leading medical anthropologists and other health social scientists carefully examines the global effects of war, the war industry, and the international weapons trade on human health and well-being. Further, this book goes beyond offering a lively and readable account of a pressing health concern by critically analyzing the political and economic forces driving the war machine to inflict ever-increasing levels of social suffering and loss of life. Book jacket.

Merrill Singer is currently senior research scientist at the Center of Health, Intervention and prevention and professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. He is also a research affiliate of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) at Yale University. G. Derrick Hodge is a medical anthropologist and political economist, who currently teaches at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He is also an adjunct professor of medical anthropology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.