The Book of War

Description

Acclaimed military historian John Keegan’s anthology of war writing from 25 centuries of battle
 
In The Book of War, John Keegan marshals a formidable host of war writings to chronicle the evolution of Western warfare through the voice of the most eloquent participants—from Thucydides’ classic account of ancient Greek phalanx warfare to a blow-by-blow description of ground fighting against the Iraqi troops in Kuwait during the Gulf War. Keegan gathers more than eighty selections, including Caesar’s Commentaries on the Roman invasion of Britain; the French Knight Jehan de Wavrin at the battle of Agincourt; Davy Crockett in the war against the Creek; Wellington’s dispatch on Waterloo; Hemingway after Caporetto; and Ernie Pyle at Normandy.

“The best military historian of our generation.” –Tom Clancy
 
“A monumental piece of literary military history.” –Chicago Tribune

A brilliantly edited and comprehensive anthology."—The New York Times Book Review.Editor’s Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I
Thucydides: The Melian Dialogue
Thucydides: The Final Sea Battle
Xenophon: The Battle of Cunaxa and Death of Cyrus
Xenophon: A Plundering Expedition
Julius Caesar: First British Expedition
Josephus: The Horrors of the Siege
Usamah Ibn-Munqidh: An Arab-Syrian Gentleman
Jean Froissart: The Battle of Crécy, 26 August 1346
Jehan de Wavrin: A French Knight’s Account of Agincourt
Andrew Wheatcroft: The Fall of Constantinople
Diego Hurtado de Mendoze: Such Botching, Disorder and Chaos
Francesco Balbi di Correggio: The Siege of Malta
Inga Clendinnen: Aztecs
George Peele (1558-1596): Farewell to Arms
Father Paul Ragueneau: An Attack by Iroquois Warriors
William Dunbar: Braddock at the Monongahela
Robert Southey (1774-1843): The Battle of Blenheim
Anna Myers: The Revolution Remembered (1)
John Scott of Amwell (1730-1793): The Drum
Jacob Zimmerman: The Revolution Remembered (2)
David Crockett: Davy Crockett
John D. Hunter: Captivity Among the Indians
Thomas Campbell (1777-1844): Hohenlinden

Part II
Sergeant William Lawrence: Fugitive and Recruit 1804-6
Sergeant William Lawrence: Badajoz March-April 1812
A Gentleman Volunteer: The Battle of Vitorio
Helen Roeder: Captain Roeder
Victor Hugo (1802-1885): Russia 1812
Private Wheeler: The Letters of Private Wheeler
Duke of Wellington: Wellington’s Waterloo Despatch
James Bodell: A Soldier’s View of Empire
Henry Clifford: Clifford in the Crimea
Colin Frederick Campbell: Letters from Camp
W. H. Fitchett: The Relief of Lucknow
Lieutenant-Colonel Fremantle: The Fremantle Diary
Stephen Crane (1871-1900): War is Kind
Elizabeth B. Custer: General Custer
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936): Tommy
Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift, 1879: Four eyewitness accounts
Sir Henry Newbolt (1862-1938): Vitaï Lampada

Part III
Stephen Graham: How the News of War Came to a Village on the Chinese Frontier
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928): In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’
Erwin Rommel: Infantry Attacks
Compton Mackenzie: Gallipoli Memories
Sidney Rogerson: Twelve Days
John McCrae (1872-1918): In Flanders Fields
John Glubb: A Soldier’s Diary of the Great War
Brigadier-General E.L. Spears: Prelude to Victory
W.B. Yeats: An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
Robert Graves: Goodbye to All That
Ernest Hemingway: Wounded (1)
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967): The Hero
Gerald Uloth: Riding to War
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967): The General
Isaac Babel: Red Cavalry
Wilfred Owen (1893-1918): Anthem for Doomed Youth
John Masters: Bugles and a Tiger
Alexander Stahlberg: Bounden Duty
Tim Bishop: One Young Soldier
George Orwell: Wounded (2)
Bruce Shand: Previous Engagements
Winston Churchill: BBC Broadcast, London, 19 May 1940
Stuart Milner-Barry: Codebreakers
Peter Cremer: U-333
Hugh Dundas: Flying Start
George Kennard: Loopy
Studs Terkel: The Good War
Obituary: David Stirling
Keith Douglas (1920-44): Aristocrats
Alexander Stahlberg: Bounden Duty (2)
Geyr von Schweppenburg: On the Other Side of the Hill
Marie-Louise Osmont: Normandy Diary
Ernie Pyle: Battle and Breakout in Normandy
David Smiley: Albanian Assignment
Franklin Lindsay: Beacons in the Night
Alexander Stahlberg: Bounden Duty (3)
George MacDonald Fraser: Quartered Safe Out Here
Eric Lomax: The Railway Man
William Laurence: Bombing Nagasaki
C.W. Bowman: Red Thunder, Tropic Lightning
James Fenton: The Fall of Saigon
Andy McNab: Bravo Two Zero

Sources and Acknowledgments
Index of Authors
Index

Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan (1934–2012), was one of the most distinguished contemporary military historians and was for many years the senior lecturer at Sandhurst (the British Royal Military Academy) and the defense editor of the Daily Telegraph (London). Keegan was the author of numerous books including The Face of Battle, The Mask of Command, The Price of Admiralty, Six Armies in Normandy, and The Second World War, and was a fellow at the Royal Society of Literature.US

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