Customer Reviews

Clash of Chariots: The Great Tank Battles

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This book presents a decent historical development of tank warfare and identifies most of the major landmarks and turning points. The book, however, does not provide many detailed acounts of armored actions and sometimes the enagements are difficult to follow. In particular, the book is lacking enough battle maps to properly illustrate actions and the terrain they occurred in. I was also dissapointed by the book's poor editing; it was clearly evident that the editor merely ran his spell checker over the document and called it complete. There are numerous incorrect words throughout the entire text; they are properly spelled, however. People who want a shallow history of tank warfare may want to read this book and will find it entertaining. For a better book on actual tank battles I would recommend reading Panzer Battles by F.W. von Mellenthin.

"Clash of Chariots" is a flawed history of armored warfare. It introduces itself as survey of armored warfare from Cambrai to Desert Storm. However, it contains no new scholarship and seriously misses the mark in describing the evolution of tank warfare over the past 85 years.
Even the battles choosen as examples are poorly integrated. The general level of description is operational, however in places it it is antidotal without trying to provide a tactical description. of events. Key changes in the warfighting model are ignored. For example, a resonable explaination of the shift in the balance of power between armor and infantry is given in the section on the Arab- Israeli wars. Yet, the development and effect of tank-busting aircraft is absent unless you tabulate tank losses to aircraft begining in the WWII campaigns in the western desert yourself. Even the connection between the battles was very loose (other then chronologically).
Finally, there are numerous typographical errors in the volume.
About the only positive thing I can say about the book is the bibliography is correct. Although, it looked very similar to the recommended reading list published by the West Point History department.
"Clash of Chariots" is a shoddy piece of scholarship and writing. My guess is the author's could never decide on who their audience really was.

I'm only half way through the book, but i agree with some of the comments of previous reviewers. For me, the book gets too bogged down in the minutae of some of the battles and doesn't put the military strategy in overall perspective. It also hasn't clearly shown the evolution of tank tactics resulting from the lessons learned from those battles, but merely describes key battles in chronological order and lets the reader draw their own inferences, rightly or wrongly. I really think the biggest flaw of the book is the lack of an overarching tactical focus/framework that helps integrate the battle descriptions and links the evolution of armored warfare. Also, although the book includes some maps, there aren't enough.

I read a Clash of Chariots thinking I would get some understanding of the evolution in tank warfare from its inception until the 1991 Gulf War. The authors mention that they will cover this at both the tactical and operational levels.

Instead, I found the book to be a boring blow-by-blow description of each battle with hardly any thought given to integrating the battle descriptions into a coherent discussion of tank tactics or operations. The battle descriptions are impossible to follow. The maps used in the book are of little use in helping to understand the battle narratives.

In short, look elsewhere.