From the aerial bombing of Parisians by German planes in August 1914 to President Obama's escalations of aerial drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the history of 20th and 21st century warfare has been a history of strategic bombing, which invariably kills primarily civilians and is, in the view of editors Tanaka (Hiroshima Peace Institute, Hiroshima City U., Japan) and Young (history, New York U., US), simply terrorism. They present 10 papers that address this sordid history through discussion of the nature of the bombing campaigns of Europe during World War II, the British "humane bombing" of Iraq between the two World Wars, US destruction of Japanese cities and its legacies in American war-making to the present, the justifications given for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese strategic bombing of the Chinese city of Chongqing, bombing and the morality of war, and the current international legal framework concerning aerial bombardment of civilians. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)