Celtic Warriors: 400 Bc - 1600 Ad [Hardcover]

Tim Newark (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Blandford Pr; 1St Edition edition (September 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0713716908
• ISBN-13: 978-0713716900
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,551,263 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good wargamer's guide spanning a long period, September 30, 2007

By 

Black Knight - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celtic Warriors: 400 Bc - 1600 Ad (Hardcover)

Excellent volume on Celtic warriors from the ancient world of Vercingetorix to the Irish and Scottish uprisings of the 18th century. Good color plates.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Vivid descriptions, but questionable, October 26, 2008

By 

Christopher R. Travers "Einhverfr" (Chelan, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Celtic Warriors: 400 Bc - 1600 Ad (Hardcover)

First, I think this book was intended to be a popular look at Celtic war technologies. As such I think it needs to be judged in this genre rather than a more scholarly one.

On the positive side, the discussion of the tactics used by various Celtic tribes seemed to be reasonable and interesting. I wasn't sure how accurate the descriptions of actual battles were, but they were certainly vivid and the rough outlines seem to hold up.

On the negative side, I felt that a lot of the book was spent trying to glorify and defend pan-Celticism. In this way, there tended to be a minimization of the very frequent wars between various Celtic tribes and a focus almost entirely on the wars between Celtic and non-Celtic peoples. I don't have so much of a problem with this sort of thing (see my review of Kondratiev's work "The Apple Branch") but the author does not fairly state his biases in this regard, and therefore leaves open the question as to how much else is unsupported by the historical and prehistorical record.

One point I would make here is the question of pan-Celticism as an issue rather than the idea of such a thing as the "Celtic warriors." The key question is what we mean by "Celtic" and how our perspective forces us to filter material. "The Celts" by most reasonable definitions refers to the many groups which belong to the "Celtic" culturo-linguistic family. It would not have been a primary ethnic identity in antiquity any more than it is today.

9 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars REVISIONIST SWAN SONG!, March 1, 2006

By 

SUPPORT THE ASPCA. "PILUM THROWER!" (?????) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celtic Warriors: 400 Bc - 1600 Ad (Hardcover)

Mr. McBrides artwork gets a 10 out of 10! The text which there is little of is more supposition and propaganda. The author distorts and reverses the historical record giving the reader the false impression that the Celts were an actual ethnic-racial identity.

This is a book for the "pan-Celtic nationalistic crowd who have been spewing their revisionism since George Buchanan & Edward Lhuyd started the whole celtic studies agenda in the 16th & 17th century respectively.

Reality check: Greek literature owes the Celts nothing, there was never a Celtic empire, or state nor did they write their histories down.

Thus, their oral traditions can't be taken as factual history. We must therefore rely on the written records we have & the archaeological records to provide insights however tenuous. Throughout this book the author fails to prove the so-called might of the books title. One star is too many!