Bill Kissane, political scientist and historian, is a Reader in Politics at the London School of Economics, where he is a member of the Conflict Research Group. He is the author of several books on civil-war related subjects, including a pioneering study of the Irish civil war, The Politics of the Irish Civil War (2005), also published by Oxford University Press, and has held visiting positions at University College Dublin, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Bielefeld, and the National Humanities Centre in North Carolina.

"Informative, dense, and rich, Kissane's book speaks to students and academics in political science and in fields such as history, sociology, anthropology, International Relations, and law, who want to get a sense of how civil wars have been thought of historically." -- Maja Spanu, Nations and Nationalism

"Bill Kissane has still done a great service to general readers by providing a humane guide to the rather soulless social-scientific literature on civil war a sophisticated, accessible account."--Times Literary Supplement

"Nations Torn Asunder is a humbling antidote to the scholarly demand for a clear bottom-line account of civil war....Dangerous ideas, spurred by the spirit of Reformation, not deficient coercion, bred internal enmity. Civil war, in this regard, is also the history of dangerous ideas, and Kissane erects a fine gate by which to enter their realm."--Uriel Abulof, The Review of Politics