War, Law and Humanity tells the story of the transatlantic campaign to either mitigate the destructive forces of the battlefield, or prevent wars from being waged altogether, in the decades prior to the disastrous summer of 1914. Starting with the Crimean War of the 1850s, James Crossland traces this campaign to control warfare from the scandalous barracks of Scutari to the shambolic hospitals of the American Civil War, from the bloody sieges of Paris and Erzurum to the combative conference halls of Geneva and The Hague, uncovering the intertwined histories of a generation of humanitarians, surgeons, pacifists and utopians who were shocked into action by the barbarism and depravities of war. By examining the fascinating personal accounts of these figures, Crossland illuminates the complex motivations and influential actions of those committed to the campaign to control war, demonstrating how their labours built the foundation for the ideas - enshrined in our own times as international norms - that soldiers need caring for, weapons need restricting and wars need rules. Since Geoffrey Best's Humanity in Warfare (1980), I have never read such a fine work on the attempts to regulate or outcast war. Starting hopefully in the midst of the 19th century and ending horribly in August 1914, War, Law and Humanity tells the tale of military (medical) men, legal and medical humanitarians as well as outright pacifists, debating ideals and realism, quarrelling between each other and among themselves, while several wars set the scene. It is as fascinating as it is important.