Customer Reviews

Great commanders and their battles

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It is a fun read, but was a let-down as it was not as broad as I would have liked. Chronologically, it jumps from Scipio Africanus (c. 200 BC) to Ghenghis Khan (c. 1200 AD) with nothing in between. That is almost a millenium-and-a-half of commanders and battles! How can one ignore Belisarius or Charles Martel?

This is an informative book that can be read easily by an unschooled armchair general. It uses graphics of the battle scenes of Alexander, Scipio, Gustavus, Marlborough, Wellington, Rommel, MacAurthur, Napoleon, Slim, Henry V, Genghis Khan, Allenby, Washington, Lee, and others. It is a MUST have, and the introduction is a well done piece by General Sir John Hackett, an experienced soldier of the British Army, who has his own book own World War III. A warning though, it is exceedingly British. It is bias towards Britain in every battle involving the English, but this aspect is at worst evaluation a bit funny.

Great Commanders and thier battles is a nice book, especially for the price. It covers 20 great historical military commanders and offers a great deal of info and beautiful llustrations. The book is a steal for the price and is well made. The visual aids such as maps, graphs and illustrations portray battles and information throughout the book and make the information much easier to understand. This also makes the book much more enjoyable while adding character and distinction to each commander and the battles they are famous for.

The book offers a lot of information on the commanders and a lot of extra info about thier tactics and the events of thier best known battles.For each commander there is a timeline of the events of thier lives/carears, some decent and compelling biographical information, details on thier tactics, forces and champagnes as well as the impact the commander had in his world and thier place in history. Alexander's section for example spans 12 pages and does a great job illustrating his revolutionary tactics.

Some questions remain however. I wish they would have covered more than one battle per commander, and some of the information may be a bit subjective, but you really cant escape that in a book like this. I do however wonder about the choice of commanders covered. While you will find many of the most memorable names in military history, from a variety of time periods (Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, Scipio Africanus, Irwin Rommel, Robert E. Lee, Fredrick The Great, Wellington, and even Douglas Maccarthur) some exceptions are curious - for example, some of those not covered that you would think would be present include - William the conquerer, Hannibal, Patton, Zhukov, Julius Caesar, Atilla the Hun and Montgomery just to name a few.

All in all this is still a great book for the price and makes a great addition to any classroom library or any history buff's collection.

A fairly light read on the lives, times, soldiers, and tactics of the great generals and warlords of history. As a previous reviewer noticed, it is lacking sorely in the ancient and medieval periods, but I found its sections on the 17th-19th Century to be helpful and very readable. Would be useful for a student or a seasoned researcher of military history.