Customer Reviews

Battlescapes: A Photographic Testament to 2000 years of Conflict (General Military)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Not quite a thousand words worth. The authors tried to fit too many battles into this book, limiting themselves to too few pictures of each, without much perspective in the photos and very little description. I am writing a story based on the battle at Alesia, and visited France to view the area. unfortunately, I had only a few hours there -- not enough to get a lot of pictures -- and had hoped that this book would fill in some gaps. There are only two photos, one of the current town there, and one long distance from a field. Almost no description of the battle or the photos is given. And the others are, I'm afraid, the same. Some are limited to a photo of a field , with nothing to put them in their perspective of where in the photo the battle occured. Nice scenery, but not much else.

THIS BOOK IS RELEVANT ONLY TO THOSE WHO ARE FOND OF EUROPEAN HISTORY. THIS BOOK WAS A GIFT SO I CAN'T COMPLAIN ABOUT WASTING MONEY ON IT. TO FANS OF MORE RECENT MILITARY HISTORY, WHERE AMERICA WAS INVOLVED, THIS BOOK IS NOT FOR YOU. ALL OF THE BATTLES, SOME OF WHICH ARE VERY OBSCURE, OCCURRED ON THE EUROPEAN CONTINENT. THEREFORE BATTLES SUCH AS THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, WORLD WARII PACIFIC CAMPAIGNS AND SIGNIFICANT OTHERS ARE NOT EVEN MENTIONED.THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF OLD BATTLEFIELDS COULD BE OF ANY EMPTY FIELD ANYWHERE INDISTINGUISHABLE. ONLY THOSE PHOTOS OF MONUMENTS GIVE ANY CLARITY AS TO PLACE AND TIME. ANOTHER IRRITATING FACET OF THIS BOOK IS THE SIZE AND CLARITY OF THE PRINT USED. THE PHOTO CAPTIONS IN PARTICULAR ARE VERY DIFFICULT TO READ FOR AN OLDER READER(65) SUCH AS MYSELF. UNLESS YOU ARE A EUROPHILE I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND THIS BOOK.

Took this out from the library and am glad, despite being quite impressed with the photos, that I didn't purchase it. It's a book that I wouldn't be likely to look at a second time. It's a selection of battlefields from 52BCE through 1945 with a little about the battle, a few small pictures of details, and then one or more panoramic photos of the battlefield. Well, most of the old battlefields are European countryside, with a few more urban sites seen as well. And there are a few battle monuments, and the occasional (World War I mostly) shell crater left in place.

There is so much more that could be done with this idea, nothing from the recent wars in former Yugoslavia to contrast the old fields, nothing from outside of Western Europe, nothing of the massacres rather than battles, nothing marking naval actions, nothing showing the importance of the topography. Adding in some of those might have made for a book I'd be more interested in returning to.

That all said, this is a five star review, it's a beautiful book that very well captures the following motif: "Current photos of a selection of old Western European battle grounds."

It seems sometimes that every inch of Europe was at one point a battlefield. Photographer Alfred Buellesbach writes that in his research, he found 250 record battle sites in France and more than 100 in Germany. He selected 34 battlefields to photograph. They range from Alesia in 52 BC to Normandy and Seelow Height in 1944/45. Buellesbach calls himself a landscape photographer and he repeatedly proves himself to be an excellent practitioner of the craft.

Marcus Cowper is an author and publisher of military histories and he provides the written commentary.

The duo is well-matched. Buellesbach's are uniformly excellent and Cowper's commentary on the history is crisp, factual, informative and to the point.

Buellesbach's photographs of many of battlefields are disturbing for they depict perfectly ordinary scenery. Hastings, where English history was thoroughly reoriented toward France in 1066 is a rather ordinary, if scenic, looking place. Yet on October 14, 1066, an event that still shapes life a thousand years later was the scene of dramatic life and death combat.

Bucolic little villages dot the landscape where many a pivotal battle was fought. In some cases, the location of the battle is not known with certainty, so the photographer shows us what the area around the reputed site looks like. In other instances, the locations of lines are well known and Buellesbach shows us the view of the battlefield as seen by one or more of the combatants.

Older battles left few traces. They were fought mostly be men on foot who wielded pikes, swords, battleaxes and other hand weapons where they stood, often in a shield line - which must have required immense courage. Horsemen may have swirled around them at one point or another and there may have been archers as well.

But none of these units would leave much in the way of evidence on the battleground. No trenches or shell holes or fortifications. Within a week or two, the bodies would have been stripped and carted off, the grass and greenery recovered and life restored to its normal tempo - just as it looks today, which makes photographs of these bloody fields creepy in a way.

One battle that determined European history for many decades, Waterloo in 1815, is now an expanse of farmer's fields without a hint of the historic events that transpired there two centuries ago. (There are monuments and the like, but they are not on some of actual battlefields.)

World War I was a slaughter and one of the killing grounds was at Ypres. Here, the detritus of war is still evident - giant craters from detonated mines which are now ponds, artillery shells that continue to rise to the surface are captured by Buellesbach. These photographs are especially telling as are those from the Normandy and Seelow Heights battlegrounds.

For the military history buff, this is a masterpiece and something to be treasured. Buellesbach and Cowper provide a photographic tour of places that most of us will never each in our lifetimes. We can hear the drums in our minds and see the grand uniforms. In the ordinariness of what is now a farmer's field, we see the history that was made. This is a marvelous book. I hope the author and photographer will pool their talents again on an effort showing the battlegrounds of the German/Soviet conflict.

Jerry

This book is a collection of beautiful photos of famous battlefields throughout history. Lovely landscape photos, but generally hard to relate to the battles. Maps connecting the views in the photos with the events on the battlefield would have made this a great book, but there are none. The text describes the events and the photos, but maps would have been a huge plus. As it is, even if you are familiar with the battle and have some knowledge of the battlefield its hard to connect the present day photos with the events of the battle.

Alfred Buellesbach and Marcus Cowper's BATTLESCAPES: A PHOTOGRAPHIC TESTAMENT TO 2,000 YEARS OF CONFLICT will reach into general-interest as well as military libraries, gathering over 200 images of major world battlefields taken by a leading landscape photographer and presented in an oversized collection of panoramas. More than just a photo album, though, the accompanying history of battles and events is invaluable.

this is a wonderful book. the photos are well done and there is much more commentary about each battlefield than i expected. the pages the book is made with are VERY high quality. they will easily hold up over many years and this book will look as good in 30 years as it does now. my only (minor) gripe? they omit a few battlefields that i felt were VERY important in the worlds development (an example would be borodino)

i highly reccommend this.