Last Stand: Famous Battles Against the Odds [Hardcover]

Bryan Perrett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2003

Thirteen of the most heroic last stands are masterfully chronicled in graphic word and picture. General Custer at Little Big Horn, French Legionnaires against Santa Ana, the tragedy at the Alamo -- they're all here, with 10 other magnificent battles from history.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

These are part of the publisher's "Cassell Military Classics" series. Published in 1993 and 1991, respectively, they offer hair-raising stories of military skirmishes throughout history.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Bryan Perrett left the army as a successful career officer to take up the pen as a full-time writer. Able to write to any brief (he was captioning picture-strips for schoolgirl comics at one point), he found his metier as a military historian and writer of good, fast, episodic, narrative popular histories. His many books, all founded on meticulous research from primary sources, find a wide popular readership. He is the bestselling author in the bestselling Cassell Military Classics series --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Book Sales (January 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0641687389
• ISBN-13: 978-0641687389
• ASIN: 0785816801
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #959,736 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:

3.0 out of 5 stars Britain's Last Stand (with a little help from others), October 13, 2004

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last Stand! Famous Battles Against the Odds (Cassell Military Classics) (Paperback)

This is one of these compilation books that have been springing up lately, containing a collection of stories recounting various battles through history. This one purports to study what the author calls "last stands" where the one side or the other was pushed to the wall, and either defeated or so beaten down it was a miracle they survived. While the writing is alright, and the author seems to be reasonably skilled with the facts, there's no analysis or interpretation of what happened, really. Instead it's the thrilling you-are-there stuff that tells you what happened, but does almost nothing to explain why things happened the way they did.

Perrett takes a baker's dozen battles and recounts each of them in about 15 or so pages each. About half of them involve the British army, which the author, being British himself, as much as tells you is the best in the world. Given the length of the individual essays on the battles, there's little space for in depth analysis or discussions of the decisions made in the fighting. Then again, some of the battles (notably Camerone) were so small that such analysis is probably fruitless anyway. The author, then, makes a brief attempt in the "Conclusions" section, after the text, but only says that leadership, training, and morale are important in units if they're to perform like this. I could have told him that...

There's some good material here, and I don't want to be too negative. If you're looking for story-telling about military history, and you don't need or want the analytical part of things, this is probably a good book for you. Unfortunately, I want more from my military history these days than stories.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction to legendary battles!, February 12, 2005

By 

Dave (Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Last Stand: Famous Battles Against the Odds (Hardcover)

This book contains thirteen brief chapters on some of the bloodiest battles in military history, and although the emphasis is clearly on Britain, there is also a good sampling of U.S. battles as well. I'm a little disappointed that no mention of Civil War battles was included, as there are plenty of examples of "last stands" (Fort Pillow, Sailor's Creek, Vicksburg, Nashville) that could easily fill a book. Also the editing (at least in the Castle edition I own) was a little sloppy in places. There was little about the Alamo, Custer's Last Stand, or Wake Island in this book that I didn't already know, but the chapters on Napoleon's Old Guard at Waterloo, the "demon" Legionnaires at Camerone, Rorke's Drift, and Arnhem Bridge were very gripping and informative. The maps in each chapter are outstanding and very helpful in giving the reader a visual picture of the battlefields. Much of the book focuses on World War Two battles while only one chapter describes World War One "last stands". So don't expect too much from a book this short. If you're looking for a good introduction to some of Great Britain's and the United States' hardest fought battles, this is a great place to begin.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, a must have for military amateur historians, October 5, 2001

By 

Robert Walters (Canton, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Last Stand! Famous Battles Against the Odds (Cassell Military Classics) (Paperback)

This book is a series of short essays on famous last ditch battles fought through out history from Waterloo in 1815 through Imjin in Korea in 1952. While it does not cover every great last stand, by no means even a large number of them, it is still a very worthwhile book.

It covers about 10 such battles all over the world during this time period, and is written in a very easy to read format. The stories will keep you on the edge of your seat the whole time, and you will come away from it with a great deal of knowledge. Many of the stories are complete enough to shed light on a single individual involved, not just the whole unit involved.

If you like the underdog, or a fight against all odds, this book is for you.