This book helps elucidate some of the issues one needs to wrestle with in answering such questions. In that sense it is very useful. It gives the reader valuable insights into some of the choices concerning ways to think about how words are used both in academic endeavors and in politics. It provides some examples of different tools one might employ to study the ways in which words get used, another valuable contribution. However, to an extent, the promises offered are not delivered in a sufficiently strong way. It is self-evident that words take on different meanings in different contexts; it is also self-evident that words matter. The questions left largely unanswered have to do with connecting these issues with broader inquiries in the field.

Several of the chapters do tie together such connections. The chapter with Laura Brunell on gender and rhetoric in the Gulf War debate is quite good, for instance. It illustrates the connections between gender and rhetoric, which in turn shaped the nature of debate, consequently affecting how decisions were made. At the same time, this chapter and several others were very self-contained. This could be a blessing for someone choosing sections to assign in courses. Having chosen to put together the book in this manner, Beer also left some lines of argument unfulfilled, however. For instance, the chapters in Part II focus on rhetoric in the congressional debates concerning the Gulf War. It would have been interesting to see if the same members of Congress used similar rhetoric in later debates concerning intervention in the Balkans in later years. Do Democrats and Republicans think about war and death differently? Or is there gamesmanship going on, involving relations between the White House and Congress? I would have enjoyed seeing those sorts of questions dealt with more directly.

There were a couple of comparisons between examples that rubbed me the wrong way, although this may be a personal opinion. They do highlight how unique wars (and therefore peace) can be. For example, there is the assertion (p. 147) that “hundreds of thousands” of Iraqis died in Operation Desert Storm, and a parallel is drawn between the bombing of Baghdad and the firebombing of Dresden in World War II. There seems to be little agreement on how many Iraqis were killed in the fighting for Kuwait, but very few estimates run as high as several hundred thousand. To compare the destruction of Dresden with coalition bombing of Baghdad seems a stretch. One can deplore the loss of even one civilian life without having to make such comparisons.

Meanings of War and Peace is a good guide for those of use who wish to learn more about the importance of the use of language and rhetoric in international politics. This book underscores the potential utility of these approaches, but it might have been able to go beyond that to illustrate more firmly why more of us need to pay closer attention to these techniques.