The accomplished social historian Peter Stearns shows us that peace building is as much our inheritance as war making. With admirable thoroughness and clarity, Dr. Stearns examines human efforts toward peace, beginning with early forms of social organization among hunting and gathering peoples and extending all the way to the present. A strength of the author's analysis is that he also examines why peace building efforts have so often failed. Dr. Stearns empowers us to know what we are really talking about and building on as we work toward a twenty-first century characterized by widespread peace and human flourishing. — Richard Yoshimachi, President, Ikeda Center for Peace, Learning, and Dialogue This book is an extraordinary synthesis of what humans have done to experiment with peace in different contexts. It is also an invitation to think about peace as a possibility in the midst of contradictory signs. Peace is a choice that humans have made in very different contexts and yielding different results. Peter Stearns is a master in navigating the complexities of peace as it emerges in world history. — Andrea Bartoli, Dean, School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton Hall University "…[a] valuable addition to a growing body of good peace history literature… Summing Up: Recommended." — G. D. Homan, emeritus, Illinois State University in CHOICE