Publisher's Weekly
''Which is stranger: killing people you know, or destroying an opponent you have absolutely no conception of?'' asks Enzensberger (Europe, Europe), who points out that civil war is nothing new; ''cultivated'' war between nations is the ''relatively recent'' development in the span of human history. But with the end of the Cold War, the world seems to have erupted in mindlessly violent conflicts whose ''autistic'' combatants come to resemble each other as they self-destruct, asserts the author. Extending this generalization, the well-known German political and literary critic unconvincingly likens gang warfare in U.S. inner cities to the present Bosnian civil war, viewing both as acts of collective self-mutilation. But this uneven essay contains more rewarding insights, as when Enzensberger observes that more and more people are being permanently excluded from the world economic system or argues that, instead of blaming the West for its poverty, the Third World must hold accountable the indigenous ''political gangster classes'' that have been looting their own countries for decades.