Americans at War examines the impact of war on the social, cultural, economic and political life of America from the period of the first European colonisation to the present. The emphasis is not on the immediate activities of warfare itself, so we do not find a preoccupation with campaign strategies, battle tactics or weapon technologies. Instead, the focus is much broader: social and political themes cover the economy, industry, the constitution, patriotism, national identity, civil liberties, dissent, race, gender, and the family. Cultural themes cover media, literature, music, the visual arts, and cinema. What emerges is a picture of the extent to which every area of life has been shaped by war. In its quiet and understated way - there's no gung-ho rhetoric here, or any other obvious agenda - it proposes, perhaps, that we understand America (and maybe any other country) through its history of war.

This isn't overtly theorised in the introductory essays, but is supported by a simple recounting of facts; as the preface to the first volume tells us, 'Between 1607 and 1700, apart from frontier skirmishes, raids, and ambushes, colonists from South Carolina to New England were engaged in over a score of declared wars, rebellions and insurrections. In the eighteenth century Americans were at war more than at peace. Between 1700 and 1800 Americans engaged in seventeen separate conflicts and rebellions.' These conflicts, involving civilian militias as well as an increasingly professionalised army, prepared the nation for the Civil War (1861-1865), 'America's second revolution.'

The four volumes are arranged in chronological sections: 1500-1815; 1816-1900; 1901-1945; 1946-the recent present. They include 395 articles, each with a bibliography. Every volume has a glossary, a chronology, and a generous collection of primary source documents drawn from acts of Congress, court case statements, memos, speeches, declarations, unofficial manifestoes, and excerpts from literature, songs, personal letters and journals. The chronological arrangement provides a strong narrative structure, while the synoptic outline of entries included in each volume allows the reader to follow the development of a particular theme across the centuries.

The inclusion of the primary source texts is a particularly valuable resource, making this both a reference book and a key text reader. It includes some of the iconic landmarks of American political rhetoric, like Lincoln's - 'this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom' ­Gettysburg Address of 1865, and John F. Kennedy's - 'Ask not what America will do for you' - inaugural address of 1961. Each text is introduced with a useful commentary explaining its context, and the selection sets up some illuminating comparisons: JFK (and his speechwriters) knowingly recycle Lincoln's Biblical exhortations, while Paul Robeson's 1956 testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee Hearing echoes the indignation of the 1845 autobiography Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave.

As well as giving the stage to high profile statements, the articles explore broad social currents and the interactions between everyday life and war. There is an admirably lucid layout in the presentation of themes which enables us to follow the larger stories: The near destruction of American Indians, the suppression of Mexico and Central America, and the racial battles fought in the journey from slavery to integration. Recounted, for example, is the story of the mass migration of African-American populations from the rural South to the industrial cities, notably Chicago and Detroit, which followed the Civil War, and which accelerated during the industrialisation of the 1920s and 1930s. This migration of people and their labour was born of conflict and warfare, and also fed off (and fed) the means of war; for these were the centres of the industrial production of military hardware, and they became recruiting grounds for the labourers of war, serving and dying in the two world wars, as well as Vietnam and Iraq.

Can it be true - and we're asked the question here, I think - that America's most enduring symbols and narratives of national identity and unity have been generated by warfare waged not only against other nations and ideologies (such as Cold War communism, and now, armed Islamic fundamentalism), but also against its own people? We might think so, having recently seen, for example, those pictures of National Guardsmen carrying machine guns into the flooded streets of New Orleans. Maybe - but the collection of articles in these volumes also reveals the rich traditions of American pacifism, compassion and dissent.

Americans at War has a well-organised collection of articles and primary texts, and brings with it a thought-provoking premise. Unfortunately, it's let down by the sloppy handling of illustrations, often omitting the artists' names and, more importantly, the dates of the images. Some illustrations are contemporary with the events depicted, while others are later interpretations, so that, for example, incidents in the American Revolution are illustrated with kitsch nineteenth and twentieth century graphic art, and the extent to which these depictions were shaped by their later contexts is not examined. It's disappointing that the visual

documents aren't handled as if they might be useful historical evidence, and having failed to do this, it would be better if many of the illustrations had been left out.

Apart from this grumble, these are handsomely produced (and expensive) volumes, written in an engaging and accessible way. Americans at War would be of use to students of history, literature, American studies, war studies, and media studies, and of interest to the rest of us, who just want to know what the world is made of. There is also Jonathan Sutherland's African Americans at War: An Encyclopedia, 2003.