Author | : John Keegan |
Publisher | : Jonathan Cape |
Total Pages | : 408 |
Release | : 1987 |
Genre | : Business & Economics |
ISBN | : |
This book discusses generals: who they are, what they do, and how they do it affects the world in which we live.
Author | : John Keegan |
Publisher | : Jonathan Cape |
Total Pages | : 408 |
Release | : 1987 |
Genre | : Business & Economics |
ISBN | : |
This book discusses generals: who they are, what they do, and how they do it affects the world in which we live.
Author | : John Keegan |
Publisher | : Viking Press |
Total Pages | : 368 |
Release | : 1987 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 9780670459889 |
The author asserts that generalship is a cultural activity as well as an exercise in power or military skill and that it provides great insights into particular eras or places
Author | : Martin Van Creveld |
Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
Total Pages | : 356 |
Release | : 1987-01-01 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 0674257219 |
Many books have been written about strategy, tactics, and great commanders. This is the first book to deal exclusively with the nature of command itself, and to trace its development over two thousand years from ancient Greece to Vietnam. It treats historically the whole variety of problems involved in commanding armies, including staff organization and administration, communications methods and technologies, weaponry, and logistics. And it analyzes the relationship between these problems and military strategy. In vivid descriptions of key battles and campaigns—among others, Napoleon at Jena, Moltke’s Königgrätz campaign, the Arab–Israeli war of 1973, and the Americans in Vietnam—Martin van Creveld focuses on the means of command and shows how those means worked in practice. He finds that technological advances such as the railroad, breech-loading rifles, the telegraph and later the radio, tanks, and helicopters all brought commanders not only new tactical possibilities but also new limitations. Although vast changes have occurred in military thinking and technology, the one constant has been an endless search for certainty—certainty about the state and intentions of the enemy’s forces; certainty about the manifold factors that together constitute the environment in which war is fought, from the weather and terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and certainty about the state, intentions, and activities of one’s own forces. The book concludes that progress in command has usually been achieved less by employing more advanced technologies than by finding ways to transcend the limitations of existing ones.
Author | : John Keegan |
Publisher | : Penguin |
Total Pages | : 380 |
Release | : 1983-01-27 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 1440673993 |
John Keegan's groundbreaking portrayal of the common soldier in the heat of battle -- a masterpiece that explores the physical and mental aspects of warfare The Face of Battle is military history from the battlefield: a look at the direct experience of individuals at the "point of maximum danger." Without the myth-making elements of rhetoric and xenophobia, and breaking away from the stylized format of battle descriptions, John Keegan has written what is probably the definitive model for military historians. And in his scrupulous reassessment of three battles representative of three different time periods, he manages to convey what the experience of combat meant for the participants, whether they were facing the arrow cloud at the battle of Agincourt, the musket balls at Waterloo, or the steel rain of the Somme. The Face of Battle is a companion volume to John Keegan's classic study of the individual soldier, The Mask of Command: together they form a masterpiece of military and human history.
Author | : Michael Ayrton |
Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
Total Pages | : 323 |
Release | : 2015-11-04 |
Genre | : Fiction |
ISBN | : 022604243X |
“I address you across more than three thousand years, you who live at the conjunction of the Fish and the Water-carrier,” speaks Daedalus, an artisan, inventor, and designer born into an utterly alien family of heroes who value acts of war above all else, a world where his fellow Greeks seem driven only to destroy—an existence he feels compelled to escape. In this fictional autobiography of the father of Icarus, “Apollo’s creature,” a brilliant but flawed man, writer and sculptor Michael Ayrton harnesses the tales of the past to mold a myth for our times. We learn of Daedalus’s increasingly ambitious artifacts and inventions; his fascination with Minoan culture, commerce, and religion, and his efforts to adapt to them; how he comes to design the maze of the horned Minotaur; and how, when he decides that he must flee yet again, he builds two sets of wax wings—wings that will be instruments of his descent into the underworld, a place of both purgatory and rebirth. A compelling mix of history, fable, lore, and meditations on the enigma of art, The Maze Maker will ensnare classicists, artists, and all lovers of story in its convolutions of life and legend. “I never understood the pattern of my life,” writes Daedalus, “so that I have blundered through it in a maze.”
Author | : Ian Ross |
Publisher | : Bloomsbury Publishing |
Total Pages | : 443 |
Release | : 2016-12-01 |
Genre | : Fiction |
ISBN | : 1784975249 |
Ross presents us with a vision of late Rome that is tense, exhilarating, complex and exotic... When a treacherous act of murder throws the western provinces into turmoil, Aurelius Castus is ordered to take command of the military forces on the Rhine. But he soon discovers that the frontier is a place where the boundaries between civilisation and barbarism, freedom and slavery, honour and treason have little meaning. At the very heart of the conflict are two vulnerable boys. One is Emperor Constantine's young heir, Crispus. The other is Castus's own beloved son, Sabinus. Only Castus stands between them and men who would kill them. With all that he loves in danger, Castus and a handful of loyal men must fight to defend the Roman Empire. But in the heat of battle, can he distinguish friend from enemy?
Author | : William C. Davis |
Publisher | : Da Capo Press |
Total Pages | : 689 |
Release | : 2015-01-06 |
Genre | : Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | : 0306822466 |
A dual biography and a fresh approach to the always compelling subject of these two iconic leaders—how they fashioned a distinctly American war, and a lasting peace, that fundamentally changed our nation
Author | : James Lacey |
Publisher | : Bantam |
Total Pages | : 417 |
Release | : 2021-05-18 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0345547578 |
Hannibal vs. Scipio. Grant vs. Lee. Rommel vs. Patton. The greatest battles, commanders, and rivalries of all time come to life in this engrossing guide to the geniuses of military history. “A compelling study of military leadership.”—James M. McPherson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Battle Cry of Freedom Any meeting of genius may create sparks, but when military geniuses meet, their confrontations play out upon a vast panorama of states or civilizations at war, wielding the full destructive power of a mighty nation’s armies. Gods of War is the first single-volume, in-depth examination of the most celebrated military rivalries of all time, and of the rare, world-changing battles in which these great commanders in history matched themselves against true equals. From Caesar and Pompey deciding the fate of the Roman Republic, to Grant and Lee battling for a year during the American Civil War, to Rommel and Montgomery and Patton meeting in battle after battle as Hitler strove for European domination, these match-ups and their corresponding strategies are among the most memorable in history. A thrilling look into both the generals’ lives and their hardest-fought battles, Gods of War is also a thought-provoking analysis of the qualities that make a strong commander and a deep exploration of the historical context in which the contestants were required to wage war, all told with rousing narrative flair. And in a time when technology has made the potential costs of war even greater, it is a masterful look at how military strategy has evolved and what it will take for leaders to guide their nations to peace in the future.
Author | : John Keegan |
Publisher | : Penguin |
Total Pages | : 401 |
Release | : 1990-02-01 |
Genre | : History |
ISBN | : 0140096507 |
Military historian John Keegan’s gripping history of naval warfare’s evolution. In The Price of Admirality, leading military historian John Keegan illuminates the history of naval combat by expertly dissecting four landmark sea battles, each featuring a different type of warship: the Battle of Trafalgar, the Battle of Jutland in World War I, the Battle of Midway in World War II, and the long and arduous Battle of the Atlantic. “The best military historian of our generation.”—Tom Clancy “The Price of Admirality stands alongside Mr. Keegan’s earlier works in its power to impart both the big and little pictures of war.”—The New York Times