The Next World War: The new age of global conflict and the fight to stop it takes readers behind the scenes of the most dangerous era of international tensions since the end of the Cold War, as countries and their armies prepare for potential large-scale combat on a scale unseen since 1945.

From the beaches of Taiwan to the battlefields of Ukraine, it explores how the globalised world of the 1990s and 2000s has given way to the much more volatile face-offs of the 2020s, and goes behind the scenes in the corridors of power in Washington, Whitehall, Moscow and Beijing. It profiles the fights already happening to examine what could be the worse to come - and the military and diplomatic battle to prevent that escalation.

For some, this new era is already a reality. For others, such as European citizens being told to stockpile bottled water or who face possible conscription, it is coming ever closer. But for an unpredictable US and its nervous allies, this growing set of international confrontations from the Arctic to the Philippines represent likely the greatest threat yet to the world the West has built, risking the return of long and bloody wars and the threat of nuclear exchange. For those in power in Russia, China and their growing "axis of upheaval", those same flashpoints represent the chance to assert territorial claims that often go back a thousand years or more - and humiliate a West that they believe has held them down for decades.

The Next World War is the book you need to understand events already taking place from the forests of Eastern Europe and beaches of Australia to the ocean's depths, cyberspace and even the far side of the moon - and where they might go from here. It is fast-moving, wide-ranging and insightful - and will linger with you after you finish reading.