Joseph Maiolo

While I'm impressed with the research that went into this study, I also have to concure that Maiolo's efforts to tie the expression of the logic of total war that is an arms race to diplomatic developments doesn't quite come off. Perhaps the problem is that this book seems to sit uneasily between being a comparative study of the mobilization theories of the Great Powers in the Inter-War Period and a narrative history of the Thirties as an arms race. Another issue might simply be that I've read enough of Maiolo's sources that there's no way that this book can seem that fresh, though he is to be complimented on treating the twentieth century's history of arms races as a continuum and his prose does have snap.… (mere)