Rating: 
Summary: Eccentric, uneven, whimsical history of tanks
Review: This is one of those books it's hard to review. There are many reviews on this website that are unfair in that they criticize the book for not doing something the author never intended to do: recount a technical and military history of the tank. Instead this is a cultural history, and that (apparently) gives the author leeway to do what he will with the tanks themselves, stretching things very far in his quest to find their place in history. There is some detail about the development of tanks, but there's also a lot of other material here, much of it very interesting if only tangentially involved with the book's central subject.The tank was invented about a hundred years ago, and has played a crucial role in most wars for the last sixty or so years. Originally intended as a "breakthrough" weapon to cross World War I's trenches, the tank eventually became the weapon of choice for both attack and defense, because of its three main characteristics: mobility, firepower, and protection. Wright covers this obliquely, without actually explaining it. Instead, he seems fascinated by odd cultural phenomena: the fact that the first tank "expert," J.F.C. Fuller, was for a while a spiritualist and followed Aleister Crowley; the fact that in some small churches in England you can find tanks in their stained glass windows; and the fact that the American army seems very interested in not being downsized any further after the budget cuts of the nineties. There are a hundred things involving tanks that the author pays little or no attention to. Tank development outside Britain is only briefly covered, and within Britain the coverage is only uneven at best. There's almost no discussion of things like horsepower, armor thickness, gun caliber, sighting devices, etc. The Germans are briefly discussed for their contribution to the tank's development during World War II, and the Soviets are mentioned even less. The French (who had tanks during World War I, just after the British) are basically ignored. The United States is only dealt with in any detail in the modern era (if there's a mention of the Sherman tank, I didn't see it) while the rest of the world only gets a very brief nod. As a result, what you get is an uneven, entertaining, eccentric account of the cultural history of the tank. This should be qualified by saying it's an English-speaking cultural history of the tank, ignoring a great deal of the world and developments elsewhere. I enjoyed it, but readers should be aware of what they're getting into before they get it.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult to read
Review: Wright has an unusual writing style in that his sentences are very long. Up to 9 or ten lines in many places. The book covers mundane topics such as public opinion of tanks, cartoonists and writers perceptions of the tank and so on. The book drags like an anchor in many places.
The book is full of snipits of trivia and information that you won't find elsewhere concerning the development of the tank from WWI to the present day. The book does a good job discussing Russian and German tank warfare on the eastern front. He also does a fine job describing the six day war and the Yom Kippur wars in the middle east. However, he does not discuss the U.S very much. He hardly mentions the M-60, and the M-48 tanks and devotes a thin chapter to the M-1. My advice is to skip this one and buy Tom Clancy's Armored Cav.
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