War In The Shadows: The Guerrilla In History - Softcover

Asprey, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0595225942 ISBN 13: 9780595225941

Publisher: iUniverse, 2002

Synopsis

Ranging from Alexander the Great's battles with Asiatic Scythians, through the Russian Revolution, and on up to the turmoil in the Middle East and the battle in Northern Ireland, War in the Shadows is a book of monumental sweep and singular perspective. It also contains a comprehensive and hard-hitting strategic evaluation of the Vietnam War-one of the most significant analyses of "the war that won't go away."War in the Shadows tells the story of the countries currently torn by armed insurgencies and clarifies the causes of each conflict. It provides the broad viewpoint necessary for understanding them in the historical terms of guerilla warfare. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, and a highly unstable "new world order," this brand of rebellion has never been more powerful and potentially disruptive. As the author states in his Foreword, "For a number of reasons guerilla warfare has evolved into an ideal instrument for the realization of social-political-economic aspirations of underprivileged peoples. This is so patently true as to allow one to suggest that we may be witnessing a transition to a new era in warfare, an era as radically different as those of which followed the writings of Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, and Mahan."War in the Shadows is crucial to understanding the complex challenges of our new and dangerous era.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert B. Asprey is a former U.S. Marine Corps captain, a Fulbright Scholar, and a veteran writer of military history whose internationally acclaimed works include Semper Fidelis: A History of the Marines in World War II, At Belleau Wood, and The German High Command at War: Hindenburg and Ludendorff Conduct World War I.

From Publishers Weekly:

Originally published in two volumes in 1975, this updated, abridged version of Asprey's monumental survey of guerrilla warfare begins with the struggle between Persian king Darius and Scythian irregulars and concludes with the mujahedin resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He discusses how great commanders such as Hannibal and Napoleon dealt with irregulars and how counterinsurgency experts such as Sir Gerald Templar during the Malayan Emergency in the early 1950s found ways to defeat the guerrilla. Roughly a fifth of the text treats the United States's involvement in Vietnam and our failure to adapt organizationally or tactically to the guerrilla challenge of the Viet Cong. Asprey's angry remarks about our "criminal military-political strategy" in Southeast Asia is even more scathing than in the original edition. This is the definitive history of guerrilla warfare over the past two millenia, illustrating its evolution into "an ideal instrument for the realization of social-political-economic aspirations of underprivileged peoples."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0595225942
• ISBN 13: 9780595225941
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 602