The following two books discuss most of the topics in the talk in much greater detail and also fill in many intermediate steps and topics.
Dyer, Gwynne, War, Crown Publishers, Inc., New York, 1985.
O’Connell, Robert L., Soul of the Sword (An Illustrated History of Weaponry and Warfare from Prehistory to the Present), The Free Press, New York, 2002.
Covering the methods of studying ancient times and the Neanderthals:
Stringer, Christopher and Clive Gamble, In Search of the Neanderthals, Thames and Hudson, New York, 1993
Covering ancient warfare and the dramatic increase in warfare after about 10,000 BC:
Ferrill, Arther, The Origins of War from the Stone Age to Alexander the Great, Thames and Hudson, London, 1985.
Gregor, Thomas, ed., A Natural History of Peace, Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville and London, 1996.
Horgan, John, The End of War, McSweeney's Books, San Francisco, 2012.
Keegan, John, A History of Warfare, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, 1993.
Starr, Chester G., Early Man, Prehistory and the Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, Oxford University Press, London, 1973.
Wenke, Robert J., Patterns in Prehistory, Humankind's First Three Million Years, Oxford University Press, London, 1990.
Covering America before the coming of the Europeans and as well as relations between native Americans and settlers:
Bakeless, John (Ed.), The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Mentor (Penguin Books USA), New York, 1964.
Josephy, Alvin M. Jr., The Indian Heritage of America, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1968.
Milner II, Clyde, et. al. (ed.), The Oxford History of the American West, Oxford University Press, New York, 1994.
Covering technical details of civil war weapons as well as tactics:
Catton, Bruce, The Army of the Potomac: Mr. Lincoln's Army, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY 1951. [Especially in chapter 4, "An Army on the March"]
Catton, Bruce, Reflections on the Civil War, Berkley Books, New York, 1982. [Especially part 4, "The First Modern War"]
Coombe, Jack D., Thunder Along the Mississippi, the River Battles That Split the Confederacy, Bantam Books, New York, 1996.
deKay, James T., MONITOR, the Ballantine Publishing Group, New York, 1997.
On what happened to the battleship Maine:
Rickover, H. G., How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD, 1976.
Covering the Hamburg bombing in great detail as well as overall bombing strategy in World War II:
Middlebrook, Martin, The Battle of Hamburg, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1980.
Covering the development and use (in WWII) of nuclear weapons as well as World War II and the immediate Post War era:
Rhodes, Richard, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1986.
Rhodes, Richard, Dark Sun, The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1995.
The US government publication covering the results of nuclear weapons tests during the 1940's, 1950's, and early 1960's:
US Department of Defense, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Superintendent of Documents, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1962.
Here are some web sites that treat current events involving foreign and military affairs. Although they express various points of view, they all contain much more information than made available in the daily few minutes of TV news.
This web site shows the history nuclear weapons and testing, a timeline of events, a look at a formerly secret nuclear war shelter for members of Congress, and a “panic quiz”. It includes blast and fallout maps as well as film clips of explosions, the bright light and heat, and the shock wave bending a grove of trees, shattering houses, and surprising a group of observers who rose from their trench too soon. The site is at the following address: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/sfeature/index.html
For recent information about the numbers and types of nuclear weapons deployed in the world by various countries, visit the web site of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Go to the NUCLEAR WEAPONS tab and follow the "nuclear notebook" links. It also discusses many other foreign and military issues. It is at http://www.thebulletin.org/
The World Factbook of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) posts information to the Internet about many other nations of the world. The website gives, in its own words, "information on the history, people, government, economy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 266 world entities". It is at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html (NOTE: Since this is a secure link, you may need to copy it and paste it into your web browser.) The Center for Defense Information is an organization staffed by retired military officers and civilians with experience in defense analysis. It is not part of the government, and it gives an independent point of view on military affairs throughout the world. It is at http://www.cdi.org/
The Council for a Livable World is devoted to promoting arms control and the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. Its web site includes extensive information on existing and proposed arms control treaties. It is at http://www.clw.org/.
The CATO Institute is generally known as a conservative "think-tank" which produces policy studies on many issues from a conservative point of view. It describes itself as “dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace". It is at http://www.cato.org/
MORE WEB LINKS SPECIFIC TO MY TALK ON THIS SUBJECT HERE.