In political scientist Barbara F. Walter’s new book How Civil Wars Start, she builds on her decades spent researching such conflicts around the world to show how many of the same instigating factors are now present in the United States.

My review is at PopMatters:

From Syria to Ukraine, Afghanistan to Yemen, today’s rebels usually exist as a hodgepodge of ad-hoc elements using guerrilla and terror tactics to destabilize, sow chaos, and undermine the central authority. If there is a Second American Civil War (and Walter is careful to say “if”), it will probably look less like Antietam or Gettysburg and more like the Oklahoma City bombing and the bloody sectarian flareups that ripped through Belfast and Baghdad for so many years…

You can read an excerpt here.