Military Geography: For Professionals and the Public

Rating:
Summary: Excellent introduction to a specialized topic.
Review: If you are a serious reader of military history, a serving military professional, or a specialist in international security and defense issues, this book is worth your time. As an introductory text, it covers many topics that are crucial to military planning but often receive only brief mention in histories or briefings. Collins, a former Army officer, stresses land geography, but does not stint oceans, the atmosphere or interplanetary space. His discussions of urban areas are too brief, given the increasing amount of large-scale violence in cities since the end of World War II. More maps would also be an improvement. Nonetheless, highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not great, some interesting sections
Review: Some of the chapters (esp. of physical geography + tides + winds) were interesting, making me aware of things I never thought about before.

But a fair amount of the book was just average, almost filler, and added little to my knowledge.

Overall, the book is worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: ***Terrain and the 9 Grounds***
Review: Sun Tzu the greatest military strategist to ever live dedicated two complete scrolls to the use of geography in warfare. The two scrolls were (translated) "Terrain" and the second was "Nine Grounds". Today the out come of all major conflicts are determined with a list of various factors one of those being geography. Knowing the "lay of the land" is a major asset to a tactician, knowing the "land" enables a planner to estimate probably courses of actions the enemy may take and how he may counter this move while using all available assets to his advantage, like the local geography. This includes every element from the weather, season, night, day, terrain, and that is to name but a few. The book covers topics from sea states to atmosphere as well as outer space and moon conditions. The book uses historical events to promote the topic by illustrating the events outcome due to some overlooked or advantages geographical condition. This book is not just for some planning officer at corps level but is an awesome primer for squad leaders and specialty troops like scouts, snipers and Special Forces operators. The book is also quite a good read for the armchair historian. The content of the book is put together excellent, the text, illustrations, and pictures are crisp and clear. The book is also oversized which makes it easier to read and handle. As a final not if you own this book, or like this topic I also recommend; "Battling The Elements" by Harold A. Winters.