Based on a TV series scheduled for spring 1995, this book provides a comprehensive overview of warfare in the 20th century in all its forms. Describing the causes of wars in the international arena, their course and how peace was made, it also traces the awesome developments in weapons technology and features stills from contemporary World War I film. From balloon flight to bomber aircraft, from breech-loading artillery to rocket systems and chemical warfare, from trench warfare to urban terrorism, the book analyzes as it informs, taking no sides but seeking to increase our understanding of war in all its forms. The author is a historian and a defence analyst who works closely with the Institute for Strategic Studies and the Ministry of Defence. He is the author of numerous books and articles and lectures on military history all over the world.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Based on a 26-part BBC-TV series, Messenger's book is a broad overview of history's bloodiest century, from the Boer War to the 1994 massacres in Rwanda. Lavishly illustrated, the book covers world wars, wars of national liberation, civil wars, guerrilla wars and the rise of terrorism. Messenger describes the emergence of the submarine, the tank and the military airplane and observes ironically that many of today's conflicts are being fought with weapons technology not very different from that of 1900. The view is by no means restricted to battlefield confrontations. For instance, he discusses the effect on French army morale of the collapse of the medical system and shows how the Second Balkan War of 1913 foreshadowed ethnic rivalries that plague the region to this day. This satisfying account blends perceptive analysis with dramatic narrative. Messenger is a professional military historian and defense analyst and a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Britain. Illustrations.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Messenger, another of those ubiquitous and invaluable British army officers who retire to distinction as military historians, proffers this companion to a BBC TV series that stands well enough on its own. Its facts are mostly familiar (its photographs break rather more new ground), World War I is scanted a trifle, and the World War II coverage is definitely a bit Anglocentric. Having the whole, gruesome picture of twentieth-century war laid out in one volume, however, makes it much easier to see, for example, how the ethnic broils in the Balkans that led directly to World War I proceeded in behavior during World War II that reinforced their intensity and eventuated in the present Four-Horsemen-of-the-Apocalypse-like trampling of the corpse of what was once Yugoslavia. Roland Green
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent coverage,
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This review is from: The Century of Warfare: Worldwide Conflict from 1900 to the Present Day (Hardcover)
I really enjoyed the deptha and variety that it presented, it provides a diverse, interesting format that sums up the conflicts of this huge century of Warfare
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