Customer Reviews

The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes

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Max Hastings has compiled a truly stellar group of personal stories of campaigns dating from the Bible to the Falklands War. Each item is briefly introduced, with any background needed to understand the context of the story as it relates to the battle or campaign. It being the "Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes" the emphasis is on British history, but there's also a fair number of French, and American stories thrown in as well. Active or retired military members of most countries will especially enjoy the fights against bureaucracy going back to the Napoleonic Wars-plus ca change I guess. Anyway, it's too bad though, that almost no German or Russian stories are included-but any anthology requires some fairly tough editing to make publication. In fairness, Mr Hastings explains that there just weren't "that many" German anecdotes, and I expect that linguistic difficulties and sources (my copy is dated 1985) excluded the Russians. A more surprising omission is a lack of ancient Greek military stories, a few of which are almost common knowledge (at least in military circles.)
The publishing date is, I think, the only real issue I have with the book. After almost ten years, a new edition with Ancient Greece, plus maybe the Vietnam, and Gulf I/II would further enchance an excellent book. Highly recommended.

A great compilation of tales from the touching to the comically irrelevant (be warned, some tales are really funny), as can only be delivered from a British viewpoint. Another similar book is "Military Anecdotes" by G. Regan, which also appears to be out of print currently. I have read this book again and again until the covers are about to come off. I love the variety of stories here. Highly recommended, and I wish Oxford will update this with a new print edition so it would be cheaper. Hastings has done a laudable job in selecting and editing these stories.