Castles, Battles, & Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History

This book is a gem for those interested in war (peace) economics and economic history, or in fact also for those interested in economic theory and application. Co-authored by an economist (Brauer) and an historian (Van Tuyll) it is exceptional in both methodology and in depth of narrative and insight. Castles, Battles and Bombs is an example of how inter-disciplinary scholarship can be done well, and covers many fields including political economy and economic theory, public finance and fiscal history, behavioral and leadership psychology, political history, military history and strategy, and period history, and draws from sources in English, French, Italian and German over these same diverse fields, bringing the work together into a concise whole grounded in a well-defined and clear exposition. Although the authors self-admittedly cast a wide-net in terms of time-frame (1000 to 1999AD) they purposely too admit that the case-studies in which they choose to apply economic analysis to historical events are “offbeat ” (p.40) to avoid any pretension of completeness. The periods covered, one case-study per period, are the High Middle Ages (1000-1300), on expenditures for castle-building versus battle-ready soldiers i