In these ten essays contributors examine the incidence of war from its roots, namely its political economy, in a variety of case studies including the war of trafficking and rents in local and diasporic Lebanon, the role of organizational finance in the evolution of the internal war in Peru, the reasons for the criminalization of the insurgency in Sierra Leone, the conflict over resources in Angola's civil wars, the conflicts of greed and need at the heart of conflicts in the Congo, resources and armed conflicts in Colombia, state failure and regional economic collapse in Afghanistan, and considerations of policy relating to resources, ideology and poverty in domestic and international conflicts. Distributed by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)