Invisible armies: an epic history of guerrilla warfare from ancient times to the present

Prologue: Baghdad patrol, April 9, 2007

I. Barbarians at the gate : the origins of guerrilla warfare. Ambush at Beth-Horon : Romans vs. Jews, AD 66

Classical conflicts : the Peloponnesian War, Alexander the Great in Central Asia, the Maccabees, and the Bar Kokhba Revolt, 426 BC-AD

Uncivilized warfare : tribal wars of mass destruction

Akkad and the origins Of insurgency : Mesopotamia, 2334-2005 BC

Catch me if you can : Persians vs. Scythians, 512 BC

"Create a desert" : the origins of counterinsurgency in Assyria and Rome, 1100 BC-AD 212

Rome's downfall : the Barbarian invasions, AD 370-476

An Eastern way of war? Ancient Chinese warfare beyond Sun Tzu

Nomads and mandarins : Xiongnu vs. Han, 200 BC-AD 48

The guerrilla paradox : why the weak beat the strong

The tartan rebellions : Scotland vs. England, 1296-1746

War by the book : the counterinsurgents' advantage

II. Liberty or death : the rise of the liberal revolutionaries. Irregulars in the age of reason : hussars, pandours, and rangers, 1648-1775

The American hornets : the revolution against Britain, 1775-1783

War to the knife : the Peninsular War, 1808-1814

Black Spartacus : the Haitian War of Independence, 1791-1804

Greeks and their lovers : the Greek War of Independence, 1821-1832

Hero of two worlds : Giuseppe Garibaldi and the struggle for Italian unification, 1833-1872

Revolutionary consequences : the liberal achievement

III. The spreading oil ssot : the wars of empire. The wars that weren't : why did so few guerrillas resist the European advance?

The skulking way of war : the "forest wars" in eastern North America, 1622-1842

The winning of the West : braves vs. Bluecoats, 1848-1890

The winning of the East : the holy war against Russia in Chechnya and Dagestan, 1829-1859

Dark defiles : the First Anglo-Afghan War, 1838-1842

Northwest Frontier : Britain and the Pashtuns, 1897-1947

Mission civilisatrice : Lyautey in Morocco, 1912-1925

Commandos : Britain's near-defeat in South Africa, 1899-1902

High noon for empire : why imperialism carried the seeds of its own destruction

IV. The bomb throwers : the first age of international terrorism. Suicide knifers : the Assassins, AD 1090-1256

John Brown's body : the terrorist who helped start the Civil War, 1856-1859

The destruction of Reconstruction : Ku Kluxers and the war against civil rights, 1866-1876

Propaganda by the deed : Anarchists, ca, 1880-ca. 1939

Hunting the Tsar : the Nihilists on the trail of Alexander II, 1879-1881

'An uncontrollable explosion" : socialist revolutionaries in Russia, 1902-1917

Shinners and Peelers : the Irish War of Independence, 1919-1921

The terrorist mind : sinners or saints?

V. The sideshows : guerrillas and commandos in the World Wars. The Thirty Years' War : blood Brothers and Brownshirts, 1914-1945

The evolution of an archaeologist : "Lawrence of Arabia," 1916-1935

The regular irregulars : the birth of the special Forces in World War II

Wingate's wars : a "wayward genius" in Palestine, Abyssinia, and Burma, 1936-1944

Resistance and collaboration : Yugoslavia, 1941-1945, and the limits of scorched-earth counterinsurgency

Assessing the "supersoldiers" : did commandos make a difference?

VI. The end of empire : the wars of "national liberation". The world after the war : the slipping European grip

The rise of the red emperor : Mao Zedong's long march to power, 1921-1949

Adieu at Dien Bien Phu : the Indochina War, 1945-1954

"Convince or coerce" : the Algerian War of Independence, 1954-1962

A man and a plan : Briggs, Templer, and the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960

"A distinctly British approach"? Why the British succeeded, at least sometimes

VII. Radical chic : the romance of the leftist revolutionaries. Two sides of the coin : the guerrilla mystique in the 1960's-1970's

The quiet American : Edward Lansdale and the Huk Rebellion, 1945-1954

Creating South Vietnam : Lansdale and Diem, 1954-1956

The other war : the limitations of firepower in Vietnam, 1960-1973

M-26-7 : Castro's improbable comeback, 1952-1959

Foco or loco? Che's quixotic quest, 1965-1967

The children of '68, and '48 : the raid on Entebbe and the terrorism of the 1970's

Arafat's odyssey : what terrorism did and did not achieve for the Palestinians

Left out, or rebels without a cause : the end of the (Marxist) affair in the 1980's

VIII. God's killers : the rise of radical Islam. Fifty days that shook the world : Tehran, Mecca, Islamabad, and Kabul, November 4-December 24, 1979

Russia's Vietnam : the Red Army vs. the Mujahideen, 1980-1989

The A team : the "party of God" in Lebanon, 1982-2006

The terrorist Internationale : Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, 1988-2011

Carnage In Mesopotamia : Al Qaeda in Iraq since 2003

Counterinsurgency rediscovered : David Petraeus and the Surge, 2007-2008

Down and out? The failures and successes of the global Islamist insurgency

Epilogue: Meeting in Marjah, October 23, 2011

Implications : twelve articles, or the lessons of five thousand years

Appendix: The Invisible Armies database.