Encyclopedia of Cyber Warfare. Edited by Paul J. Springer. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017. 379 p. $89.00 (ISBN 978-1-4408-4424-9). E-book available (978-1-4408-4425-6), call for pricing.

Great Britain was once the global power because it ruled the waves, but Germany ruled below the waves, and it almost won both world wars. Now the United States is the global power, but could the airwaves be our undoing?

The world remains innocent of an all-out cyber war, but cyber conflict has become routine. We read about cyber attacks on corporations, government agencies, and even the election system at home almost as often as reports of physical warfare abroad. Journalist Ted Koppel sent shivers through his readers with his book Lights Out: A Cyberattack, a Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath (Penguin Random House, 2015) when he conjured doomsday scenarios about the collapse of the American electric grid. This new work by Paul J. Springer, a professor of comparative military history at the Air Command and Staff College, is less sensational, but it still suggests ways America’s economic and military superiority can be strangled by the Internet.

The single volume features a standard reference format of 223 entries by 59 authors arranged alphabetically by subject. The entries, which are largely focused on the experience of Western nations, include “see also” notes and suggested further readings. The front of the book has a guide to where specific topics can be found within broad subject areas. In the back, extra sections offer eight primary documents, a chronology, a bibliography, a list of contributors, and an index.

The entries will appeal mainly to academic or professional readers. They explain cyber conflict buzz terms—historical (Operation Shady Rat), technical (SQL Injection), bureaucratic (US Coast Guard Cyber Command), strategic (Cyber-Equivalence Doctrine), and biographical (Bradley—later Chelsea—Manning). There are also entries on certain pop culture topics, such as the 1983 movie WarGames.

Springer’s encyclopedia follows his Cyber Warfare (ABC-CLIO, 2015). The older book is a more fundamental library resource. It contains full chapters on the history of cyber warfare and on the challenges and controversies facing those involved. It then provides perspective pieces by experts, profiles of key players and organizations, documents, resources, and a glossary. The newer work essentially expands on the profiles and glossary elements of the older one.

For readers ready to go beyond introductory material, an option is Paul Rosenzweig’s Cyber Warfare: How Conflicts in Cyberspace Are Challenging America and Changing the World (ABC-CLIO, 2013), which addresses key issues at more length. Perhaps even more than with most reference topics these days, however, a book about cyber warfare that is only four years old is already at risk of being out of date.

Fortunately, while not reference books, there are other more recent options. Among them are Fred Kaplan’s Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War (Simon and Schuster, 2016) and Brandon Valeriano and Ryan C. Maness’s Cyber War Versus Cyber Realities: Cyber Conflict in the International System (Oxford University Press, 2015).—Evan Davis, Librarian, Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana