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Rating: 
Summary: One of the best texts I have read...
Review: As a non-military person I approached this work with some trepidation, but within pages my fears were erased. This is a superbly written, well thought out book. Leonhard offers, step by step, the history of "maneuver" warfare, and explains how it has been ill applied in American arms. He goes on to provide a doctrine for it's application, and finally critiques the Army's performance in Panama and the Persian Gulf.Leonhard's tactical sense is above reproach, and his explanations are offered in cogent, brief passages. This work is unique in my experience with military theory in that it is both easy to read, and important. Any serious student of military theory/history would do well to read this book to better understand both the past, and the future. Oh, and if you pay careful attention, it just might improve your chess game as well...it did mine!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding contribution to military theory
Review: As a non-military person I approached this work with some trepidation, but within pages my fears were erased. This is a superbly written, well thought out book. Leonhard offers, step by step, the history of "maneuver" warfare, and explains how it has been ill applied in American arms. He goes on to provide a doctrine for it's application, and finally critiques the Army's performance in Panama and the Persian Gulf. Leonhard's tactical sense is above reproach, and his explanations are offered in cogent, brief passages. This work is unique in my experience with military theory in that it is both easy to read, and important. Any serious student of military theory/history would do well to read this book to better understand both the past, and the future. Oh, and if you pay careful attention, it just might improve your chess game as well...it did mine!
Rating:
Summary: The Real Deal
Review: I have been a civilian student of strategy for over 20 years. This book is a bit dry, but then logic and strategy aren't meant to be light reads. Mr. Leonhard really understands that romance has no place in warfare and that the all honor goes to the winner.
Rating: 
Summary: Great ideas, mediocre presentation
Review: Robert Leonhard is one of America's greatest military theorists. Unfortunately his presentation of ideas is not as clear and concise as it might be. He has valid ideas but his dry writing style prevents them from being conveyed effectively. This book is not an easy read. For similar concepts in a more readable format I would recommend "Warfighting" by Hayden, "Maneuver Warfare Anthology" by Hooker, or "Maneuver Warfare Handbook" by Lind. Only after you have read these books will you benefit from reading Leonhard's book. See also Leonhards excellent "Principles of War for the Information Age" which is significant and important (but suffers many of the flaws of this book). I feel that book is a more visionary and unique work by this important authour.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Introduction to Military Theory
Review: Robert Leonhard's work, The Art of Manuever:manuever-warfare Theory and Airland Battle, was a good introduction for myself to the theory of manuever-warfare. For some time since the tenth grade through an Army stint and four years of college history classes I was lacking names and theories to what I had been witness to while reading military histories from Caesar's Gallic Wars to Hackworth's About Face. I am thankful to Leonhard for those terms: manuever, attrition and dislocation. An important consideration of manuever-warfare that Leonhard included was the effectiveness of artillery. A weakness that jumped out at me from the start was Leonhard's assertion that Western civilization never practiced Manuever warfare. The author believes that only in the East was manuever-warfare practiced. Immediately Hannibal's sixteen year campaign in Italy during the Second Punic War came to mind. Time and again Hannibal demonstrated classic manuever-warfare as he literally destroyed Roman armies larger than his own. Scipio Africanus answer to Hannibal was to defeat Hannibal with his own understanding of manuever-warfare. Caesar's campaigns in Gaul was another demonstation of manuever warfare in the West. Ironically while praising the Orient for Tsun-Zu's, The Art of War, the only example of war practiced in China taht Leonhard gives is a Chinese General NOT practicing manuever warfare. Leonhard did not convince me that China was the home of manuever-warfare. The U.S. Army was quite smitten with Tsun-Zu during the latter 1980's and one has to wonder if Leonhard was the instigator or a follower of that infatuation. This objection aside this book would be one to include on my bookshelf....Von Mellenthin, (author;Panzer Battles) claims that at towards the end of 1944 onward the Soviets had developed quite a few effective armored-manuever generals. Wehrmacht generals trace Nazi Germany's defeat on the Eastern Front to Hitler's decision to swing the army towards the Caucaus oil fields away from Moscow(not on Soviet attrition warfare.)...
Rating:
Summary: a good book to read
Review: The Art of Maneuver is a good book worth reading. Leonnhard talked about many problems in in the U.S. Army right now, from the way we think to the way we fight. In the second part of the book he talks about the weakness of the U.S. military tactic - air land battle. He pointed out that air land battle could not deal great destruction to the enemy force than we normally expected. It was shockong when I first learned it.
But however, Leonhard did not gave the solution to the problems he pointed out, it is a great disapointment to me. Because of that, it made the book more of a list of complains.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent work.
Review: The Art of Maneuver is an excellent work from the commander that we "well trained platoon leaders" affectionately referred to as "The Professor." This book is as timely now as when it was first published. If we try to gauge our success in Afghanistan (or any war) by counting body bags, we will be doomed to repeat our own history. Instead we must, as Leonhard teaches us, keep the enemy dislocated and operate inside his decision cycle. Excellent advise for officers of today and of the future from a seasoned officer who has studied his craft well.
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Summary: An excellent breakdown of the failings of AirLandBattle
Review: This authoritative work shines a harsh light on what is the greatest failing of the modern US Army, namely the poorly conceived and structurally flawed operational doctrine AirLandBattle. AirLandBattle was conceived as a politically expedient approach with which to fight a ground war in West Germany, and by holding to the idea that NATO needed to defend a finite territory against superior numbers, they allowed some very shoddy operational thinking to make its way into official doctrine. The Cold War over, the problems remain. In chapter after chapter, Leonhard provides evidence that the US Army has fallen away from the concepts which make mobile warfare so devastatingly effective, as the emphasis has shifted away from dislocation and winning through maneuver towards the mindless and ultimately pointless strategy of high-tech attrition.
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Summary: bad bad bad
Review: This is one of the best examples of someone who learned in college how to say nothing and make it appear there is substance to it. It is nothing but hundreds and hundreds of general statements that are never expanded to detail as to what how when where and who. All his books I have seen are like that.
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