Why do cease-fire agreements sometimes last for years while others flounder barely long enough to be announced? How to maintain peace in the aftermath of war is arguably one of the most important questions of the post--Cold War era. And yet it is one of the least explored issues in the study of war and peace. Here, Page Fortna offers the first comprehensive analysis of why cease-fires between states succeed or fail. She develops cooperation theory to argue that mechanisms within these agreements can help maintain peace by altering the incentives for war and peace, reducing uncertainty, and helping to prevent or manage accidents that could lead to war. To test this theory, the book first explores factors, such as decisive victory and prior history of conflict, that affect the baseline prospects for peace. It then considers whether stronger cease-fires are likely to be implemented in the hardest or the easiest cases. Next, through both quantitative and qualitative testing of the effects of cease-fire agreements, firm evidence emerges that agreements do matter. Durable peace is harder to achieve after some wars than others, but when most difficult, states usually invest more in peace building. These efforts work. Strong agreements markedly lessen the risk of further war. Mechanisms such as demilitarized zones, dispute resolution commissions, peacekeeping, and external guarantees can help maintain peace between even the deadliest of foes.

Excerpt from Cease Firing The river was wide. It dealt in loops and a tortuous course, and for the most part it was yellow and turbid and strong of current. There were sandbars in the river, there were jewelled islands; there were parallel swamps, lakes, and bayous. From the border of these, and out of the water, rose tall trees, starred over, in their season, with satiny cups or disks, flowers of their own or vast flowering vines, networks of languid bloom. The Spanish moss, too, swayed from the trees, and about their knees shivered the canebrakes. Of a remarkable personality throughout, in its last thousand miles the river grew unique. Now it ran between bluffs of coloured day, and now it flowed above the level of the surrounding country. You did not go down to the river: you went up to the river, the river caged like a tiger behind the levees. Time of flood was the tiger's time. Down went the levee - widened in an instant the ragged crevasse - out came the beast! - December, along the stretch of the Mississippi under consideration, was of a weather nearly like a Virginian late autumn. In the river towns and in the plantation gardens roses yet bloomed. In the fields the cotton should have been gathered, carried - all the silver stuff - in wagons, or in baskets on the heads of negroes, to the gin-houses. This December it was not so. It was the December of 1862. Life, as it used to be, had disintegrated. Life, as it was, left the fields untended and the harvest ungathered. Why pick cotton when there was nowhere to send it? The fields stayed white. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

These linked short stories tell the tales of Tony Aardehuis, a young Ontario police officer who centres more on the human puzzle than on crime and detection. Fraud, theft, blackmail: every small town crime short of murder drives these stories to conclusions that usually warm the heart. Along the way Tony struggles, like the rest of us, to figure it all out. The first Tony Aardehuis story was inspired by the Eastern Ontario ice storm of 1998 and the suggestion that natural disaster might double as a murder weapon. This constable meets life with a fine blend of curiosity, compassion and an occasional bent for bending the rules. Tony Aardehuis's adventures have been published in The Grist Mill, Bone Dance, and Storyteller Magazine, where he twice won The Great Canadian Story Contest. One story is also shortlisted for a 2003 Arthur Ellis Award.

Table of Contents B. C. 30,000 Giants on the Earth Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII The Solar Magnet The Great Drought Poisoned Air

In this book, eight stories written by Pedro Antonio de Alarcon have been brought together in English for the first time. The nail in "The Nail" is found driven into a disinterred skull, and if some of the events are implausible and others incredible, it is also true that there is considerable suspense and mystery. "The Cornet" draws more heavily on historical reality, with its depiction of the horror of civil war and factual detail. Noteworthy for its first-person narration and rapid-fire dialogue, "The Cornet" paints an episode of fraternal love and the power of the will. "The Orderly," although set against the same Carlist War background, has more to do with a military "attitude" than a Carlist "War", and describes the transformation effected in one officer by one orderly. The War of Independence (1808-14) was fought against Napoleon and his attempt to place his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne. After years of horrendous carnage and the Duke of Wellington's victory at Vitoria, the "Little Corporal" renounced the Spanish crown. The War of Independence stories - "The French Sympathizer" and "The Mayor of Lapeza"--Have been known to generations of Spanish readers, especially for their theme of patriotism. These two, together with "Long Live the Pope!" and "The Guardian Angel," extol the heroism and courage of the Spanish people. "The Foreigner," the story of a young Pole who had been conscripted into Napoleon's army, looks at Spain and two of her soldiers through the eyes of a Spanish muleteer.