War and the World: Military Power and the Fate of Continents, 1450-2000

Rating:
Summary: The Evolution not Revolution in Military Affairs
Review: First of all this is not a book for the casual reader of military history. Although it reads as if it was designed to be used in a university history course, it assumes a fairly extensive knowledge of major world military events throughout the period under review. For the more knowledgeable reader of historical and contemporary military affairs, Jeremy Black offers a less radical view of the Revolution in Military Affairs based on a European-centric view of events. The strength of this book is that is broadens the scope of major military evolutionary trends to address the impact of geography, political, scientific, and demographic influences. Mr. Black strives and generally succeeds in bringing a "balanced" view of why military "revolutions" did and did not occur. I highly recommend this book to readers who have extensive background in both military and general world history. For more casual readers I recommend having a copy of R. Ernest and Trevor N. Dupuy's Encyclopedia of Military History and a good historical atlas for ready reference. Well done and recommended.

Rating:
Summary: The Evolution not Revolution in Military Affairs
Review: First of all this is not a book for the casual reader of military history. Although it reads as if it was designed to be used in a university history course, it assumes a fairly extensive knowledge of major world military events throughout the period under review. For the more knowledgeable reader of historical and contemporary military affairs, Jeremy Black offers a less radical view of the Revolution in Military Affairs based on a European-centric view of events. The strength of this book is that is broadens the scope of major military evolutionary trends to address the impact of geography, political, scientific, and demographic influences. Mr. Black strives and generally succeeds in bringing a "balanced" view of why military "revolutions" did and did not occur. I highly recommend this book to readers who have extensive background in both military and general world history. For more casual readers I recommend having a copy of R. Ernest and Trevor N. Dupuy's Encyclopedia of Military History and a good historical atlas for ready reference. Well done and recommended.

Rating:
Summary: quantity but not quality
Review: I read this because of a History of War class in college. Black does a remarkable job of making mention of lots of conflicts that most people have never heard of before. But he jumps around alot, mentioning some people and wars very briefly and totally out of nowhere and often jumping around a bit. If you a want a very summarized look at military history in the last 550 years, this is it. Just don't expect details or alot of coherency.

Rating:
Summary: quantity but not quality
Review: I read this because of a History of War class in college. Black does a remarkable job of making mention of lots of conflicts that most people have never heard of before. But he jumps around alot, mentioning some people and wars very briefly and totally out of nowhere and often jumping around a bit. If you a want a very summarized look at military history in the last 550 years, this is it. Just don't expect details or alot of coherency.

Rating:
Summary: The best book on military history I,ve read thus far.
Review: War and the World is an extremely well researched and informative account of military history that is truly universal in scope. Jeremy Black has wisely expanded his focus beyond the constricting binds of Eurocentrism to produce a work of scholarship that douments, in detail, military developments in parts of the world ignored by conventional military history. His assertion that future domination by Europeans of most of the world after the fifteenth century was by no means a foregone conclusion is a legitimate one in light of the opposition they would receive from equally determined, aggressive and expansionist non-Europeans. He explores the limitations of European power, expounding on their powerful naval capabilty, but emphasizing their inabilty to be more then a significant presence beyond the coastal regions of places like West Africa. Expansionist peoples like the Dzhungars of central Asia, the Fulani of west Africa and the Moroccans (notably in the context of their little known, but spectacular defeat of the Portugeuse at the battle of Alcazarquivir in 1578) are mentioned, their successes or failures examined. In other military history texts, they would have been outright ignored. It is because of this kind of depth to the author's research that War and the World was a far more satisfying read then John Keegan's A History of Warfare. While War and the World spans a period of history from 1450-2000, I hope that Jeremy Black, should he decide to write another book on world military history, will extend his chronological scope to encompass warfare from the dawn of man onward. It would be interesting to read his perspectives on the Romans, Mongols and other aggressive peoples who forged bloody niches in the pre-modern age.