As US imperialism continues to dictate foreign policy, Deadly Contradictions is a compelling account of the American empire. Stephen P. Reyna argues that contemporary forms of violence exercised by American elites in the colonies, client state, and regions of interest have deferred imperial problems, but not without raising their own set of deadly contradictions. This book can be read many ways: as a polemic against geopolitics, as a classic social anthropological text, or as a seminal analysis of twenty-four US global wars during the Cold War and post-Cold War eras.

Stephen P. Reyna is an associate of the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology in Halle/Salle and Honorary Professor at the University of Manchester's Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute. He is the co-editor of the journal Anthropological Theory.