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Fighting for a Living. A Comparative History of Military Labour 1500-2000, Erik-Jan Zürcher, ed., Amsterdam University Press 2013. 688 pp.Historians have long overlooked the labour involved in soldiering. With the publication of Fighting for a Living, the world of military workers is brought to the forefront of scholarly inquiry.This new publication investigates the circumstances that have produced starkly different systems of recruiting and employing soldiers in different parts of the globe over the last 500 years, on the basis of case studies from Europe, Africa, America, the Middle East and Asia.The twenty contributions to this volume undertake a systematic comparative analysis of military labour, addressing two distinct, and normally quite separate, communities: labour historians and military historians.Fighting for a Living is the first volume of IISH's new book series: Work around the Globe: Historical Comparisons and Connections, published by Amsterdam University Press.For optimal availability for readers all over the world, volumes in this series are published online in open access.It is also included in the pilot project of Knowledge Unlatched, a collaborate initiative enabling open access books, helping stakeholders to work together for a sustainable open future for specialist scholarly books. This includes free access for end users, to ensure optimal availability for readers all over the world.