The Battle 100: The Stories Behind History's Most Influential Battles

Offers a historical retrospective on the most important battles of the past three thousand years, describing in detail one hundred key military campaigns, with commentary on the outcome of the conflict, who won and lost, the results of each war, and its impact on world history and culture, with a provocative afterword on the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. 20,000 first printing.

Grade 9 Up-Lanning has presented what, in his opinion, are the most important military battles in world history. The foreword stresses that the ranking is according to the battle's "influence on history," rather than by "decisive engagement." Each essay discusses participants, leaders, and location, and gives an evaluation of the battle's impact. The land, sea, and air battles included range in date from 1479 B.C.E. to 1967 and include such significant engagements as the battles of Yorktown, Hastings, Stalingrad, Cajamarca, Waterloo, Normandy, and Dien Bien Phu. Military jargon is kept to a minimum; however, students will need some background knowledge to fully appreciate many of the entries. While informative half- to full-page, black-and-white maps show each battle's setting, there are no world and/or regional map(s) to show the relative location of each conflict. The bibliography is extensive. This readable resource provides more information and analysis on individual battles than a general encyclopedia, and will be useful for students needing an overview on an engagement.
Eldon Younce, Harper Elementary School, KS
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This handy browser's reference from retired Army officer and decorated Vietnam veteran Lanning offers brief accounts of the author's choice of the 100 most influential battles in history. The selections are wide-ranging: the first three are household words-Yorktown, Hastings and Stalingrad-while the last three are Tel-el-Kebir, which established the British protectorate over Egypt in 1882, Vyborg, the White victory over the Reds in 1918 that ensured the independence of Finland, and Little Big Horn, whose major importance is the amount of controversy it has generated since 1876. The author has impartially included wars of colonial conquest (Cajamarca, which gave Pizarro and Spain rule over the Inca Empire) and colonial liberation (Carabobo, which freed Venezuela, and Dien Bien Phu). He also offers useful perspectives on naval battles (Actium, Trafalgar, Tsushima, Lepanto and Midway, to name a few). Each article features a clearly written if brief narrative, including analyses of what is known about the tactics and weapons, and an excellent map. Some of them also have flaws, such as the article on Tsushima-not all the Russian ships were old-and the political attack on Walter Cronkite in the article on the Tet Offensive. This work is very similar to Lanning's The Military 100, a volume in the same format on the most influential commanders, but unusual and even witty insights also abound, such as the comment that the Battle of Kadesh was the first example of a general's publicity machine (in this case, Ramses II of Egypt) turning a drawn battle into a victory. The wide range keeps depth of each article limited, but these are useful introductions to many battles that are not household words.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.