The Seventy Great Battles in History
Black explains that two major criteria guided the selection of 70 great battles: the cultural consequence and the encapsulation of the technologies and tactics of warfare. Black's team of historians employ a uniform graphical layout consisting of a fact box of forces, a map, color paintings or photographs, and a condensed analytic narrative. The technology theme, which so fascinates many readers of military history, does not accelerate, of course, until discussion of the battles of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, whereas the clash-of-cultures theme dominates analysis of battles of the ancient and medieval periods. Marathon and Salamis, having preserved the Greek cradle of Western civilization, open the volume, and supporting its midsection is the collection of conflicts that delineated Europe's Christian/Muslim cultural frontier. With firepower supplanting muscle power from the 1600s forward, Black's battle accounts increasingly weigh commanders' adroitness with new weaponry. Visually emphatic, Black's informative introduction to warfare's history represents a browsing foundation for further reading.Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved