Tank: the progress of a monstrous war machine - Hardcover

Patrick Wright

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571192599 ISBN 13: 9780571192595

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2000

Synopsis

It is the embodiment of modern war. From the boxy monstrosities that clanked over trenches and broke the stalemate of World War I to the dreaded German Panzers that extended Hitler's grasp across Europe, to the burning Iraqi hulks that marked the progress of Operation Desert Storm, the tank dominated military theory and practice throughout the twentieth century. And yet it was always far more than this-a fixation in the public mind, a curious compound of fact and fantasy.

In Tank, Patrick Wright offers an entertaining, insightful, even meditative account of this emblematic vehicle. A brilliant work of military history, this book also explores the tank as a social and cultural object. The author interweaves classic armored campaigns such as the blitzkrieg and Desert Storm with the stunning political impact of tanks in the streets of Prague in 1968 and in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He also explores how the tank became the symbol of technological futurism and unstoppable progress, as well as of totalitarian oppression.

Patrick Wright is effortlessly witty and compelling from start to finish, from an interview with legendary Israeli warrior General Israel Tal to a tour of the high-tech armor training center at Fort Knox, to discussions of songs, movies, and television images that kept the tank at the forefront of popular imagination.

About this title

About the Author

Patrick Wright is Professor of Modern Cultural Studies at Nottingham Trent University, U.K. His books include Living in an Old Country, A Journey Through the Ruins, and The Village That Died for England.

From Publishers Weekly

Beginning with H.G. Wells's 1903 premonitions of tanklike creatures, Wright (The Village that Died for England) traces the cultural history of a kill vehicle variously called "behemoth," "landship" and even "Mother." Wright's exhaustive research offers a treasure trove of facts usually eclipsed in conventional military or technical histories. The early attention-getting potential of the creatures ("male" or "female," depending on their armament) during WWI was used to demoralizing effect on German troops and as a successful fund-raising tool by the British, whose "tank bank" war bonds proved popular. Such potential was not lost on subsequent champions of the ungainly machine in the interwar period, from the British tactician J.F.C. Fuller to the unholy trinity of Guderian, Rommel and Hitler, simultaneously the tank's greatest and most disastrous deployers. As authoritarian regimes rose, so did Western PR campaigns showing the tank as the symbol of liberation (from fascism and bolshevism), while paradoxically, Wright argues, the tank subsequently began to appear primarily as a tool governments use to control their own people. Wright, a professor of modern cultural studies at the U.K.'s Nottingham Trent University, also covers the suicidal heroism of Soviet women tankers in WWII and talks with Israel Tal about his singular design for Israel's Merkava. While the book's scope is somewhat skewed toward Britain, ignoring Asian tank development and deployment, the WWII Pacific theater and Vietnam, Wright brings vital social and microhistorical data to military history and fleshes out the story of one of the 2oth century's most powerful, destructive and highly symbolic creations. Photos. (On sale Apr. 29)Forecast: This book's iconic subject and cultural savvy should bring in readers who don't normally pick up military history. Look for sales to grow as reviews chime in; the book got great press when published in the U.K. in 2000.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571192599
• ISBN 13: 9780571192595
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 499