Tank: The Progress of a Monstrous War Machine [Hardcover]

Patrick Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 25, 2002

It is the embodiment of modern war. From the boxy monstrosities that clanked over trenches and broke the stalemate of World War I to the dreaded German Panzers that extended Hitler's grasp across Europe, to the burning Iraqi hulks that marked the progress of Operation Desert Storm, the tank dominated military theory and practice throughout the twentieth century. And yet it was always far more than this-a fixation in the public mind, a curious compound of fact and fantasy.

In Tank, Patrick Wright offers an entertaining, insightful, even meditative account of this emblematic vehicle. A brilliant work of military history, this book also explores the tank as a social and cultural object. The author interweaves classic armored campaigns such as the blitzkrieg and Desert Storm with the stunning political impact of tanks in the streets of Prague in 1968 and in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He also explores how the tank became the symbol of technological futurism and unstoppable progress, as well as of totalitarian oppression.

Patrick Wright is effortlessly witty and compelling from start to finish, from an interview with legendary Israeli warrior General Israel Tal to a tour of the high-tech armor training center at Fort Knox, to discussions of songs, movies, and television images that kept the tank at the forefront of popular imagination.

"A hugely enjoyable work . . . an immensely readable, well-researched book, filled with interesting detours, unusual stories and idiosyncratic discussions relating the tank to philosophy, religion, art, politics, and even necromancy." (General Sir Michael Rose, in the Times, London)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Beginning with H.G. Wells's 1903 premonitions of tanklike creatures, Wright (The Village that Died for England) traces the cultural history of a kill vehicle variously called "behemoth," "landship" and even "Mother." Wright's exhaustive research offers a treasure trove of facts usually eclipsed in conventional military or technical histories. The early attention-getting potential of the creatures ("male" or "female," depending on their armament) during WWI was used to demoralizing effect on German troops and as a successful fund-raising tool by the British, whose "tank bank" war bonds proved popular. Such potential was not lost on subsequent champions of the ungainly machine in the interwar period, from the British tactician J.F.C. Fuller to the unholy trinity of Guderian, Rommel and Hitler, simultaneously the tank's greatest and most disastrous deployers. As authoritarian regimes rose, so did Western PR campaigns showing the tank as the symbol of liberation (from fascism and bolshevism), while paradoxically, Wright argues, the tank subsequently began to appear primarily as a tool governments use to control their own people. Wright, a professor of modern cultural studies at the U.K.'s Nottingham Trent University, also covers the suicidal heroism of Soviet women tankers in WWII and talks with Israel Tal about his singular design for Israel's Merkava. While the book's scope is somewhat skewed toward Britain, ignoring Asian tank development and deployment, the WWII Pacific theater and Vietnam, Wright brings vital social and microhistorical data to military history and fleshes out the story of one of the 2oth century's most powerful, destructive and highly symbolic creations. Photos. (On sale Apr. 29)Forecast: This book's iconic subject and cultural savvy should bring in readers who don't normally pick up military history. Look for sales to grow as reviews chime in; the book got great press when published in the U.K. in 2000.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

From its first manifestation on the Western Front, when it looked like a trapezoid out of a Cubist painting, the tank has been a cultural symbol as much as a battlefield force. "A phantom of cultural imagination" Wright calls the tank, and he sets out to analyze the written material it has inspired, whether popular, artistic, or military. Wright's idea of writing about the tank-as-icon could have easily slipped into unreadable arcana, but from the start, Wright gains readers' attention by discussing the most celebrated tank image ever, that of the lone man confronting a tank column in Beijing in 1989. Within that picture ricocheted one aspect of tank-power--its "moral effect" of intimidation. Right up to his closing visit to the U.S. Army's tank center in Kentucky, Wright's ruminative narrative will rivet readers with its hybrid melding of military history with literary and popular writing on the topic. A sophisticated yet highly accessible book. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 499 pages
• Publisher: Viking; First American Edition edition (April 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670030708
• ISBN-13: 978-0670030705
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,411,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Cultural, not military history, January 18, 2003

By 

Texan (San Antonio, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tank: The Progress of a Monstrous War Machine (Hardcover)

Take heed of the reviews that warn this is a "Cultural Studies" book and not military history. That would be fine except that the writing is newspaper columnist quality, and poorly researched to boot. For example, this book caught my eye because I am reading D'Este's biography of Patton. I checked the index and found only a handful of pages in "Tank" referencing this critically important figure in the development of the tank. Worse, the references were only from World War I, and merely a batch of amusing anecdotes (Mr. Wright seems to have found it noteworthy that Patton disliked brewed tea). It's obvious that the author's "research" consisted of browsing through a few pages in secondary sources. But then again, that seems to be what passes for research these days in the Cultural Studies field.

This is a postmodernist critique of the big bad icon of the mean old warmongering tank from the perspective of the chattering classes. If that's what you're after, you will enjoy it. If not, avoid this at all costs.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Lesson: Fully read the title and subtitle before purchasing, January 20, 2006

By 

SpaceCommander (Everett, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tank (Paperback)

If you expect a book talking about tank development from a technical standpoint read no further - DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. If you want to read about sorcery, witchcraft and how it is realted to tank development - read on! All the looneys are out in full force here - a bevy of British black priests, and other musings totally "out there." I suffered through most of it, skimming constantly and slowing down when encountering the witches and stuff (for amusement). I guess if you want to know "everything" about tanks and how they "fit in" with the "grand scheme of things" then read the book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An odyssey of tangents, December 31, 2003

By 

C. Bordman "chuckbordman" (Bridgewater, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tank (Paperback)

I agree with the previous reviewer, David W. Nicholas, that "Tank" should be judged for what it is: a cultural review of the tank. The direction Mr. Wright chooses is indeed eccentric, but warning is given in the first chapter when the author states: "It is that symbolic drama, rather than just instrumental history of powerpacks, gun tubes and deployments, that I have set out to investigate in this book. It...is approached in a spirit of exorcism rather than celebration." In fact, writing from that angle compelled me to read on.

But as I proceeded, I found it remarkable-at times laughable-what Patrick Wright found relevant to the topic of tanks. Part I diverges drastically from military discussion to describe an artist who painted camouflage on WWI tanks. Part II, "Church of Mechanization," starts with a discourse on stained glass depicting military topics, and goes into depth on who installed such windows and description of the ensuing controversy. That same section taught me more than I ever wanted to know about Aleister Crowley (a strange man who apparently had a strong influence on the tank strategist, J.F.C Fuller) as he and J.F.C. Fuller engaged in mystical rituals. In Part IV I found myself reading about archaeology which was somehow connected to tank development. And in part V artists return again, and this time they paint a tank pink.

In general, I was comfortable with the verbose writing of the author, especially when relevant to tanks. I enjoyed his observations on French, and Israeli military history. That said, there are some sentences that are excessively wordy. The following describes the work of a Polish artist in New York: "Exuding counterfactual energy, this utopian contrivance challenged the viewer to recognize that the world might be different, and to consider the host of possibilities excluded by the machines to which modern history had granted practical reality." Or the just plain bizarre, like "the rubber Russian" theory stated by a U.S. Colonel I'm still trying to understand: "You took a latex toy Russian soldier, and stretched it out as far as it would go. When it was at breaking point, you would design your own force to meet it and then let the thing go."

I'm glad I read "Tank" and would recommend tank buffs give it a try. I found that the themes of each section were effectively conveyed with disparate yet cohesive chapters. "Church of Mechanization" showed tank strategy as a kind of religion to J.F.C Fuller. And Part IV, "The Coming of the Merkava," built up successfully to the development of the Merkava tank.

The title and cover of the paperback are deceptive. There should be a subtitle giving some idea of the content. Suggested title: Tanks: Pink and Otherwise