Selected Product:
| War in European History
Paperback
Author: Michael Howard
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Release Date: 2001-11-08
ISBN-10: 0192802089
ISBN-13: 9780192802088
List Price: $19.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
This reissue of Howard's classic text includes a short new afterword by the author. "Wars have often determined the character of society. Society in exchange has determined the character of wars. This is the theme of Michael Howard's stimulating book. It is written with all his usual skill and in its small compass is perhaps the most original book he has written. Though he surveys a thousand years of history, he does so without sinking in a slough of facts and draws a broad outline of developments which will delight the general reader."--A.J.P. Taylor, Observer
A plethora of highlights
| Customer Rating: | This book is a wonderful overview (much like a grand essay), with insight in abundance. It is for works like this that the Kindle highlight button has great utility. It is a book to be savored, read again, and ruminated on. The "Further Reading" is a trove.
I've always doubted the wisdom of WWII's Casablanca edict: "unconditional surrender", and, after this reading experience, even more so. Perhaps, we are all knights errant.
Aren't we readers lucky that Michael Howard knows his way around a library? |
Perfect
| Customer Rating: | | This book was perfectly phenomenal. In 144 pages, Howard packed in so much, without making it appear over-packed. 1,000 years of warfare, with all the attendant strategies, tactics, and developments, are presented in a readable and thorough fashion, without coming across as simplistic or factoid laden. Howard finished the book in 2001 (I'm thinking in the pre-9/11 2001) and in the last page he nailed some of the major issues the world would be dealing with in the early stages of the 21st century. First, he properly casts doubt on the Revolution in Military Affairs approach (doubt, mind you, and not a complete discard); second, he recognizes the likely rise of terrorism; and third, he points out that troops will be taking on far more than conventional battle missions, which will come to include peacekeeping, counterinsurgency warfare, and a host of other previously difficult to imagine military missions. |
The development of warfare from medieval times.
| Customer Rating: | This is a good read for those wanting to know how warfare developed. Since Europe controlled most of the land mass of the world at some points, the development of warfare worldwide can be linked with what happened in Europe. War in medieval times was more of a local affair. The development of nation states changed where war became one of merchants and mercenaries. The French Revolution forced war to become revolutionary. Nationalism focused war towards the goals of the nation.
This is a short read on the development of warfare. I would not rate this book for everybody. It does give the history of warfare in simple to understand terms. |
Essential Reading
| Customer Rating: | | A friend of mine recommended this book to me. At the time it was required reading at West Point and it very well may still be. No other book displays the history of war in Europe in such a concise and complete way. It also shows how the nations of Europe developed and what gave them thier defining characteristics. Anyone with an interest in Western history or military history should own a copy of this book. |
Worthwhile, but not as interesting as it should be.
| Customer Rating: | | This is a short treatise, based on a series of lectures. Its objective is to identify the interactions between economic, social and political structures, technology, the objectives of warfare, and the ways war are thought. It covers European warfare from the middle ages through World War II. The book is replete with insights and interesting generalizations. Yet, for a short book, I still found myself getting bogged down in details of 16th and 17th century political history: perhaps had I a better background I would have enjoyed the politics as kind of a quick review, but I think Howard emphasizes political details too much in several of his chapters, while not focusing sufficiently on tactics and technology. As it happened, immediately prior to reading Howard, I had read about 40 pages of Fighting Techniques of the Ancient World: Equipment, Combat Skills and Tactics by Simon Anglim et al and found this terrific, almost indispensable background (I would not recommend the rest of that book so highly). |
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