In his farewell speech, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the dangers of a military-industrial complex (MIC). In Paul Koistinen's new book, that warning appears to have been both prophetic and largely ignored. As the final volume in his magisterial study of the political economy of American warfare, State of War describes the bipolar world that developed from rivalry between the U.S. and USSR, showing how seventy years of defense spending have bred a monster. Koistinen underscores how during the second half of twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the United States began to maintain large military structures during peacetime. Many factors led to that result: the American economy stood practically alone in a war-ravaged world; the federal government, especially executive authority, was at pinnacle of its powers; the military accumulated unprecedented influence over national security; and weaponry became more sophisticated following World War II. Koistinen describes how rise of the MIC was preceded by a gradual process of institutional adaptation and then supported and reinforced by willing participation of Big Science and its industrial partners, the broader academic world, and think tanks. He also evaluates the effects of ongoing defense budgets within context of the nation's economy since 1950s. Over time, the MIC effectively blocked efforts to reduce expenditures, control the arms race, improve relations with adversaries, or adopt more enlightened policies toward the developing world while manipulating the public on behalf of national security to sustain the warfare state. Now twenty years after Soviet Union's demise, defense budgets are higher than during the Cold War. As he observes, more than six decades of militaristic mobilization for stabilizing a turbulent world have firmly entrenched the state of war as a state of mind for our nation. Collectively, Koistinen's five-volume opus provides an unparalleled analysis of the economics of America's wars from the colonial period to the present, illuminating its impact upon the nation's military campaigns, foreign policy, and domestic life.