History of Warfare: Art of War: War and Military Thought

by Martin van Creveld

Book Overview

From Confucian China to the present day, warriors have understood that combat is an art, one requiring sharp, flexible minds capable of adapting quickly to constantly shifting situations. In a survey... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0304352640
• ISBN13: 9780304352647
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Cassell
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.1" x 10.7"

Customer Reviews

Good Survey

War has been both a hugely important activity and a challenging subject for thinkers. This very good historical survey of military thought gives you a sense of the kinds of challenges that war presents to a thinker. The author is described as Israel's most prominent military historian with fifteen books on military history and strategy to his credit, and it is clear that he has actually carefully thought about the subject. Besides indicating the things that must be considered (for instance, understanding the enemy's strengths and weaknesses as well as your own, the political effects of violence, and technology), he attempts to describe what each of the chief surviving documents on military theory (by Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and others) has contributed. There are nice descriptions of the changing nature of war. There is a helpful time line, an annotated list of thirty-four leading military thinkers, a decent index, and a list of recommendations for further reading. I found two minor faults: He repeatedly mentions "operational art" as intermediate between tactics and strategy without offering any clarifying definition of operational art to go with his definitions of the other two, and he lists Grotius' "The Law of War and Peace" in the time line but neglects to mention it in the text or the index. I suppose the misleading phrase "tactics, operational art, and strategy" is just an unusually sloppy attempt to introduce the question of lines of operation, a feature of war that he eventually points out first became important in the eighteenth century.

Good introduction to strategic thought

This book covers the most important parts of the history of the art of war (war strategy). The only thing missing is that the military theorists of this century are not mentioned, maybe because Martin Van Creveld is one of them and does not want to name his "competitors". I especially miss the mentioning of Boyd. Overall this book is awesome. If you want to know about strategy this book is it. He, Martin Van Creveld, makes good judgement on what is important and what is not and the book is an east read.

A brief Overview of Military theory

Martin van Creveld is one of the better military historians of the last half-century or so. He writes clearly and intelligently, and produces books that are timely and innovative. He has at times gotten himself into controversies with various other authors over his interpretations of events, but he does at least think innovatively and ananlytically. If he has a weakness as a writer, it's that he's too scholarly for the general public, and his ideas are therefore somewhat inaccessible.The present volume is an attempt at an overview of the progress of military theory, as opposed to the evolution of warfare itself. It is structured, therefore, as a review of each work on warfare, one after the other in turn. As another reviewer noted, this leads to the weird phenomenon of a book about warfare (indirectly anyway) which jumps right over both World Wars without a blink. The author also attempts to keep to his subjects (the works themselves) and as a result gives the lives of the writers short shrift, at some points. Also he avoids discussing several controversies much (notably the question of how much influence Liddell Hart *really* had on the German Blitzkrieg) claiming that they've been dealt with elsewhere. This is no doubt true, but since this is supposed to be an introductory volume on the subject, saying this without even directing the reader to another volume is a bit annoying.Taking all of the above into consideration, I enjoyed this book a great deal. Why not five stars then? Well the book is peppered with illustrations that are only marginally connected to the text of the book. Some of them are portraits of military thinkers or generals, and are reasonably worthwhile, though one that is supposed to be Sherman looks more like Grant. But also there are many elaborate maps (a standout feature of the Cassell History of Warfare series) and here they have nothing to do with the text and are superfluous. The only thing they do is take up space. The last one, for instance, depicts the war in Bosnia, and that's not even mentioned in the text at all, really. So I enjoyed the book, but I would hope they would rerelease it as a monograph without the useless pretty pictures.

VERY GOOD INTRODUCTION

This book by Van Creveld might disappoint his hard core followers. But not me, or the general public, to the broader audience for which it was intended.So here we have a very good description of the evolution of military theory and strategy. The basic outline of chinese military thought, of Onasander, Frontinus, Asclepiodotus and others from antiquity util the middle ages, puts things in perspective. Then the author takes us on a excursion through the Middle ages,Machiavelli, Guibert, and some others until Clausewitz.The importance of Jomini, Liddel Hart, Mahan, Ludendorff and many others is briefly outlined due to the nature and purpose of the book. At the end, for those that want to further explore, the author also has basic suggestions. Those that criticize this book for the brevity of the exploration of certain periods or authors, miss the point. Not everybody can read the direct sources and not everyone is involved in waging war.For those who seek an understanding of how military thought evolved to the present stage, this is the right book to start with ( or to end, if you are not seriously committed to the matter at hand)

A good broad review of a complex topic

This work by van Creveld is part of the History of War series from Cassell and is edited by notable historian John Keegan. It attempts to cover in single readable volume the development of military thought from ancient to modern times. Such a broad "Military Theory Survey 101" is necessarily shallow in depth. It is notable for several points: 1. It discusses Eastern theories of warfare from the ancient Chinense and other non-European viewpoints. 2. It discusses naval (Mahan, Corbett) and air power theories (Mitchell, Duhuet). 3. It gives proper credit of the concept of "total war", that is a whole nation or peoples in a struggle, to early civilization, such as the Romans.Unfortunately because of the shallowness, it has occasionally, a "if it is chapter 5, it must be Clausewitz" feeling of hurrying along. It drops tantilizing clues about some controversies - i.e. was Liddel Hart really an proto-theorist of maneuver warfare or was it a post-WWII creation? Were air power theorists of the 1920's predicating the effectiveness of strategic bombing on the use of mass destruction weapons? (for their time, 1920's, gas bombs)Finally though there is a wonderful map showing how the campaigns of the One Hundred Year's War were fought not just along political/geographic lines, but also along available areas for plunder and forage, much more could have been said about the rising importance of military logistics, especially as van Creveld is an expert in this area.In short, an excellent survey of the major ideas in military thought. All of the usual suspects are there, Sun Tzu, Clauswitz, and Mahan along with those thinkers more usually associated with the world of politics. If you have to blitz through 2,500 years of theory in one night, this is the book.