The Reader's Companion to Military History
1996
First Published
3.95
Average Rating
590
Number of Pages
How did war originate? What makes a war popular or unpopular at home? How common is desertion or mutiny? What makes a successful guerrilla insurgency? How have armies been fed throughout history? The Reader's Companion to Military History addresses these and other intriguing aspects of the most destructive, fascinating, and relentless of human enterprises—war. Filled with surprising anecdotes, little-known facts, and rare illustrations, The Reader's Companion to Military History covers major events and battles, commanders and theorists, weaponry and technological advances, and strategy and tactics. What makes the volume especially distinctive, however, is the range of thematic articles, covering such topics as courage, discipline, the effects of weather on warfare, military justice, surrender, the role of propaganda, the use of animals in war, the evolution of uniforms, psychological warfare, and morale. Unlike many military histories, the volume covers Asian, African, and South American history as well that of Europe and North America. Subjects range from the Persian Wars of 490 B.C. to such contemporary topics such as the revelations of Robert McNamara, gays in the military, and ethnic cleansing. One hundred fifty distinguished military historians, biographers, and journalists produced this volume under the editorship of Robert Cowley, editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, and Geoffrey Parker, Robert A. Lovett Professor of Military and Naval History at Yale University. The result is a remarkable chronicle of warfare that combines compelling historical narrative with the latest in contemporary scholarship.
Avg Rating
3.95
Number of Ratings
21
5 STARS
29%
4 STARS
43%
3 STARS
24%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
0%
goodreads
Author
Robert Cowley
Author · 6 books
Robert Cowley is an American military historian, who writes on topics in American and European military history ranging from the Civil War through World War II. He has held several senior positions in book and magazine publishing and is the founding editor of the award-winning MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History; Cowley has also written extensively and edited three collections of essays in counterfactual history known as What If? As part of his research he has traveled the entire length of the Western Front, from the North Sea to the Swiss Border. He currently lives in New York and Connecticut. -Wikipedia
