Historical Introduction to Wars

One major theme of this book is to provide a historical introduction to wars through the use of examples over the course of many centuries. The author has focused on that part of the world that directly connects with the Mediterranean Sea or the Black Sea or both. Although nations bounded by the North Atlantic and Atlantic do enter into the book, it is only because they are directly connected by land to another nation that does have the Mediterranean "in reach". As such, the military examples provided begin with the canonized version of "Western" when Persia faced the Greek city-states circa 490 B.C. By the time the book ends, the Second World War has been covered, and some of the Post War conditions, especially the hydrogen bomb development of the 1950s, have been mentioned. The survey is excellent in that in that it is...