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Title: A History of Warfare by John Keegan ISBN: 0-679-73082-6 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 November, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.06 (47 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: A secular view of warfare
Comment: One of your reviewers wrote: "I have painly read half of this book, and I have decided to give up and look for another book on the same subject."
I am reading the entirety of the Mr. Keegan's book. John Keegan may well have, and certainly does have this encyclopedic learning of warfare and its history and is indeed one of the century's most distinguished military historians, as the dust cover suggests. His judgement however is suspect at least in part. I was particularly interested in his take on Hitler's Germany (pgs. 371-4). Mr. Keegan writes of the Allied strategic attack on German cities (brutal though they were), "a few brave individuals rightly denounced it as a moral regression," as though Adolf Hitler did not initiate these murderous Nazi terror bombings in Poland, Rotterdam and in Keegan's own U.K., etc. And did not William Shirer -- "The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich" -- write that the German people until the very end, "still accepted and indeed supported, and in Adolf Hitler saw (him as )the country's savior?" One can only wonder if Mr. Keegan would "rightly denounce" America's and Britain's response to the inhumanity and brutality of Sept. 11, 2001 as a moral regression.
The difficulty may be, but for a couple of possible exceptions, John Keegan has no interest nor regard for providence or for any divine element in the affairs of men and so consequently this makes for some dry reading. Otherwise Mr. Keegan is a brilliant and learned historian and for those interested in a secular view of the history of human warfare, this is an excellent book.
Rating: 4
Summary: Made a History Buff of me
Comment: I've never understood why the Military History section in book stores was so large, but in this book Keegan has demonstrated why. This book is a great introduction to History.
As I'm not a history scholar (yet) I think the best thing for me to recommend this book on is it's wonderful literary writing style. Keegan's voice, even in print, is decidedly British and that takes a little adjusting to. However, once you've aclimated to that you really start to enjoy how he crafts each sentence. I found myself underlining passages not just for content but also for their turn of phrase.
Rating: 5
Summary: breathtaking in scope, complexity and reach
Comment: John Keegan's "A history of warfare" is an ambitious undertaking striving to analyze more then 5000 years of recorded history of warfare. Keegan starts with an overview of "a primitive warfare", represented by both surviving tribal cultures and ancient Middle East and Mediterranean peoples. This kind of warfare (and also ancient Chinese) is characterized by ritualistic battles of champions, hesitancy and desire to avoid direct conflict. This goes in direct contradiction with the modern Western ways of war; started by invention of pitched battle by classical Greeks, perpetuated through Roman times, inherited by Barbarian successors of Roman Empire, and ultimately developed into the concept of total war, which brought us the tragedies of the century just passed.
Keegan's theory is an antithesis of Clausewitz's thesis of "war as continuation of politics". He claims that the latter view is both restrictive and not really applicable to any period of history safe for a century after the dearth of Clausewitz (which nonetheless brought us 2 World Wars). Keegan points out that was is continuation of culture, genetics, politics, geography, and is ultimately both the reflection and the result of the human condition. In this, as in his other books, Keegan strikes a melancholy note that the humankind is both cursed and blessed by war, and as warfare grows to become total (or Clausewitz's) is looses all the redeeming qualities of the battles of the old and becomes a senseless expand of human suffering.
Keegan's style of presentation is clear and precise. Althought the book covers more then 5000 years of development of warfare across all major world cultures, people with little background in that history will find his arguments well understood.
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Title: The Face of Battle by John Keegan ISBN: 0140048979 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: July, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Book of War by John Keegan ISBN: 0140296557 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 31 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: The Mask of Command by John Keegan ISBN: 0140114068 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1989 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al-Qaeda by John Keegan ISBN: 0375400532 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
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Title: The Second World War by John Keegan ISBN: 014011341X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1990 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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