Brock (emeritus history, U. of Toronto) assembles 25 essays he has written over the past three decades as part of his study of pacifism and conscientious objection to war. They cover 1525, before which conscription was rare, to 1945, after which he says serious research is still at an early stage. Among his topics are conscientious objection among the Polish anti-trinitarians, Seventh-Day Adventists during the US Civil War, the prison samizdat of British conscientious objectors in two world wars, and Vladimir Chertkov and the Tolstoyan anti-militarist movement in the Soviet Union. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)