Erik-Jan Zürcher, ed., Fighting for a Living: A Comparative History of Military Labour 1500–2000 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013). pp. 688. €79.00 cloth.

Military history and labour history have long stood at odds with each other. Throughout the past, military forces have generally specialised in destructive practices, focusing on the destruction of an "enemy," and including in that purview the destruction of physical structures, social structures, and variably intentionally and unintentionally, the livelihoods of people within those structures.