Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction
`I am addicted to this series of pocket-portable introductory lectures. Harry Sidebottom fairly presumes that you wouldn't know a hoplite if one thrust a spear at you, and that you grasped legionary tactics from watching the DVD of Gladiator. The book manages to cover practical fighting from the Iliad to Islam's challenge to Byzantium; war as personal and state metaphor in Greece and Rome; strategy and motivation on sea and land; and then nips briskly on to historians' re-evaluations of the above - in 128 neat pages plus extra reading list and a wicked chronology.  Got that? Right, then. Fall in.' Guardian Review