Customer Reviews

The West Point Atlas of American Wars, Vol. 2: 1900-1918

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a reprint, along with its companion volume I (covering primarily the American Civil War) of works that went out-of-print in the early 1980's. It is not as big in size (i.e., as an atlas), but has all the great qualities of the original. Nothing is more annoying and infuriating then trying to read military history without being provided with maps and atlases--its useless to try! The title says "American wars" but this atlas contains almost every campaign of WWI & WWII whether the US participated or not (i.e., really an atlas of WWI & WWII in general). The maps are clear, concise, uncluttered and easy to read (can you believe it?!) and accompanied on the opposite page with simple, descriptive prose to describe the action, getting into the fundamental issues of each campaign/battle (i.e., command and logistical problems, weather, moral, etc.) and mostly fair in assessing a leader's performance. A joy to study, this (and volume 1) are a must for any serious military historian.

The most comprehensive and simple to understand set of military maps I have ever seen. I bought this book to serve as an aid while reading other works of military history, but I find myself reading it by itself. In addition to the superb and user-friendly maps, this book contains excellent narratives, which are short and concise. If you've shied away from military history because the troop manuevers were hard to understand or picture, this book will clear up any confusion. The best I've found. This volume is exclusively dedicated to WWI, and provides insights to the battles and blunders of that war. While it discusses the trench warfare, the recognizes that there was more to WWI than that. All battles with US units are detailed and explained. This book and its companion, Volume I, make up for the lack of good battle maps in too many history books.

If you are looking for a coffee table book about war, stop here. There is no need for you to continue. This one is as good as they come. However, this is not a book on West Point. (for that, I recommend "West Point", by Norman Thomas Remick). The title is somewhat confusing in that respect. But, don't let that stop you from looking at this great job done by the Dept. of Military Art and Engineering.

I'll start by saying these are the best maps covering WW1--and have been the one resource which has really enhanced my understanding of an often confusing, militarily at least (particularly on the Eastern front), conflict. Great maps of the palestine, mesopotamian, and gallipoli campaigns. More maps on the Caucausus, Armenian, and Far East would have been helpful.

The achille's heel of this volume is its title--most of this book has little relevance to contemporary US military activity (1900-1918)--the book covers WW1 exclusively a war the US didn't materially begin fighting until the spring of 1918, that is to say it's last 6 months.

So if you are looking for coverage of the operations against insurgents in the Phillipines, or the punitive raid into Mexico, keep looking. This book should be labeled the West Point Atlas of the Great War, and if that is what you're looking for you need to snatch up a used copy of this otherwise-5-star-book.

If this book was going to cover so many campaigns unrelated to the American military I wish there would have been some maps covering other wars of this period-the Russo-Japanese and the Turkish Balkan wars.

Still an excellent book!

In a response to a previous review, this book is a reprint of the original which contained 1900-1953. That is why people are mentioning WWII. For some reason, the publishers decided only to have WWI in this volume. I own the two original volumes, printed in 1959, which were used by USMA cadets. Personally, I prefer the original books because they create a touch of actual history because of their use. They are amazing books which any military nut can spend hours enjoying. For anyone who thinks these books are boring; maybe you should move to Canada, because the battles in this book won you your freedom! :) ENJOY!

Look I'm not actually reviewing this book - but I do have some comments about the reviews:

If the date is 1900-1918 in the title, how does this cover Bismarck's Germany, which would be before 1900? Similarly how serious is the league of nations coverage (which I would guess would be 1918-1939 approximately)

One of the reviews mentions WWII - but again, how does this fit in the 1900-1918 range?

This book is probably very good for a student studying war, but it's by no means an interesting coffee table type of conversational piece. It's more like a textbook , not not for me, and not for you either, I suspect.