• Chapter One: Expansion (The American West and the Invention of Barbed Wire)
• Unpacking the Louisiana Purchase
• How to Fence a Cow
• How to Fence the World

Chapter Two: Confrontation (Barbed Wire on the Battlefield)
• Conquest by Iron
• Crisis of the Horse
• Perfection of the Obstacle
• The Obstacle Triumphant

Chapter Three: Containment (Barbed Wire in the Concentration Camps)
• The Control of Nations
• Enemy People
• Tractors to Ukraine
• Trains to Auschwitz

Epilogue