Overview
This book is for concerned citizens looking to better understand peace and conflict at home and abroad and how constructive and destructive conflict shapes the world around us. Dr. Adams is a new and authentic voice for our times providing human-level explanations. He shares his experienced-based insights with us dedicated to more informed and peaceful engagements in human affairs at any level. Part memoir and part analysis of peace and conflict issues, conveyed in an engaging personalized writing style, this book draws on the author’s life journey working in conflict zones and his dedication to better understanding peace and conflict. This citizens edition is a cautionary tale for a conflicted America and world and reflects the author’s efforts to create innovative ways that people can better see and understand their conflict circumstances and peacebuilding possibilities. Peace and Conflict: Citizens Edition is an original and thought-provoking approach to the subject. Informative and hopeful, told with wit and humor, Adams invites readers into a discussion of personal experiences and social and political dynamics from both a human and conceptual perspective. For those seeking more technical explanations, a unique framework is laid out in structural and relationship terms, within negative and positive peace parameters, along a war to sustainable positive peace continuum.
Full Product Details
Author: James R. Adams
Publisher: University Press of America
Imprint: Hamilton Books
ISBN: 9780761874775
ISBN 10: 0761874771
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 05 February 2026
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Availability: To order
Reviews
Adams combines a lifetime of experience in some of the world’s most troubled spots with academic rigor and a passion for peace to share this remarkable narrative. From Air Force jet mechanic in Vietnam to UN peacebuilder in Kosovo, and now as a concerned citizen in a divided and troubled USA, he provides informed perspective with astute analysis, and he puts the current complex challenges in context and offers pathways to resolution. I enjoyed his first book, and this one is even better. I highly recommend it to anyone who seeks solutions to the conflicts in a complex and challenging world. -- Charles F. “Chic” Dambach, Former President and CEO, Alliance for Peacebuilding, author of Exhaust the Limits: The Life and Times of a Global Peacebuilder In a timely treatise for those who care about the future of America if not our world, James Adams does a masterful job of helping us understand how the same dynamics of national self-destruction over there present an existential threat to our own experiment in self-governance over here. Also, this richly researched and thought-provoking work offers a navigational guide on how the methodologies of experienced, scholarly practitioners like Jim, based on lessons learned from conflicts all over the world, can help put us back on the road to positive peace right here at home. Read this before it's too late! -- Christopher Holshek, Colonel, U.S. Army Civil Affairs (Ret.), Vice President, Narrative Strategies LLC, author of Travels with Harley - Journeys in Search of Personal and National Identity, and founder of the National Service Ride project James Adams concludes his first book with this admonition: ‘…this is a cautionary tale for an increasingly polarized America—a hard-won model of democracy, now at risk.’ His second book endeavors to address this burgeoning risk by providing a tour de force of the concepts and theoretical constructs that have been developed to describe and explain the intricacies of international intervention into internal conflicts that threaten regional and international security. -- Michael Dziedzic, Adjunct Professor, George Mason University, US, Co-Editor of The Quest for Viable Peace: International Intervention and Strategies for Conflict Transformation Rife with hostility and lack of trust, on the brink of mass violence and thus in danger of suffering many of the ills that afflicted former-Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Somalia and other war zones in which he has worked. James Adams latest book simply asks what lessons from Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor or Sudan might be helpful in Chicago, Sandy Hook, Los Angeles, Boulder, or your hometown. While there are answers to that question, and others to be gleaned from, this Citizens Edition, the book and the author warn that some remedies are difficult, some are long term, and others demand sustained effort. Are we up to these challenges, as we come to the 250th anniversary of the Republic? -- Christopher Mitchell, Professor Emeritus of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, US
Author Information
James R. Adams, PhD, a Vietnam veteran and professional field officer, has extensive on-the-ground experience in peace and stabilization operation roles with the United Nations and other international organizations in Africa, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.
