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Rating: 
Summary: What I was looking for
Review: Any book that attempts to list the "50 greatest" battles in history is going to be vulnerable to many criticisms. However, W. Weir stays away from any false claims of achievement and simply provides engaging summaries of some of the most important military clashes of the last 3,000 years. Each description is 4 or 5 pages long, and broadly covers causes, people, tactics, and other general elements. This is not an academic book in the least; it's the kind of book you pick up every once in awhile, open to a random page and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: What I was looking for
Review: Any book that attempts to list the "50 greatest" battles in history is going to be vulnerable to many criticisms. However, W. Weir stays away from any false claims of achievement and simply provides engaging summaries of some of the most important military clashes of the last 3,000 years. Each description is 4 or 5 pages long, and broadly covers causes, people, tactics, and other general elements. This is not an academic book in the least; it's the kind of book you pick up every once in awhile, open to a random page and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a real treasure!
Review: As the title suggests, this book is a list of the 50 most important battles in history, organized in order of importance. The battles range from Marathon (490 BC) to the Tet Offensive (1968 AD). The individuals chapters each cover a battle, and range from some three pages to some eleven pages (this is rough figuring on the reviewers part). They are well laid out, reducing the text to small, easily understood topics, which combine to give the reader a good overall understanding of the battle and its ramifications. As an added bonus, a quick biographical glossary is included, as is a glossary of military terms.As the author admits in the introduction, this ordering of the "importance" of battles is highly subjective, and no two authors would likely produce the exact same lists. That said, though, this book is a real treasure. The battles that it does cover, are handled in a clear and easily understood style, and are covered in a concise manner that makes this book easily read. All of the pictures in this book are black-and-white, but they are plentiful, as are the maps that are always necessary in this sort of a book. So, if you are interested in a book that is a collection of battles from all over the world, then I highly recommend this book to you!
Rating: 
Summary: Infinitely superior to most books of this type out there.
Review: I've read at least a dozen of these "turning points" books, and this is by far the best so far produced in the realm of military history, far superior to even more recent work. William Weir's prose is infinitely more readable than the academic language that typically obscures more than it reveals. He makes his points and makes them clear rather than burying them in infinite analyses that leave you wondering what the original point was. He is also not afraid to take a stand and point the finger where it belongs most of the time. His work does not make repeated apologies to the darlings of political correctness, and is not afraid to say, for example, that the Islamic world brought its own failures on itself by the smug, dismissive way it acted after Hattin, or that the lands of North Africa were Christian until the explosive Islamic conquest in the 600s. Likewise he is not afraid to shatter certain myths of military history that are just that, myths, such as the Teutoburg Forest, the Plains of Abraham, and the Siege of Orleans. Although I find myself disagreeing with him on the importance of certain battles, which appear to be rehashes of the entries in his groudbreaking Fatal Victories, most of his calls regarding importance are right on the money, and should shake up the lists written by complacent academics.
Rating:
Summary: What I was looking for
Review: I've read at least a dozen of these "turning points" books, and this is by far the best so far produced in the realm of military history, far superior to even more recent work. William Weir's prose is infinitely more readable than the academic language that typically obscures more than it reveals. He makes his points and makes them clear rather than burying them in infinite analyses that leave you wondering what the original point was. He is also not afraid to take a stand and point the finger where it belongs most of the time. His work does not make repeated apologies to the darlings of political correctness, and is not afraid to say, for example, that the Islamic world brought its own failures on itself by the smug, dismissive way it acted after Hattin, or that the lands of North Africa were Christian until the explosive Islamic conquest in the 600s. Likewise he is not afraid to shatter certain myths of military history that are just that, myths, such as the Teutoburg Forest, the Plains of Abraham, and the Siege of Orleans. Although I find myself disagreeing with him on the importance of certain battles, which appear to be rehashes of the entries in his groudbreaking Fatal Victories, most of his calls regarding importance are right on the money, and should shake up the lists written by complacent academics.
Rating:
Summary: Infinitely superior to most books of this type out there.
Review: I've read at least a dozen of these "turning points" books, and this is by far the best so far produced in the realm of military history, far superior to even more recent work. William Weir's prose is infinitely more readable than the academic language that typically obscures more than it reveals. He makes his points and makes them clear rather than burying them in infinite analyses that leave you wondering what the original point was. He is also not afraid to take a stand and point the finger where it belongs most of the time. His work does not make repeated apologies to the darlings of political correctness, and is not afraid to say, for example, that the Islamic world brought its own failures on itself by the smug, dismissive way it acted after Hattin, or that the lands of North Africa were Christian until the explosive Islamic conquest in the 600s. Likewise he is not afraid to shatter certain myths of military history that are just that, myths, such as the Teutoburg Forest, the Plains of Abraham, and the Siege of Orleans. Although I find myself disagreeing with him on the importance of certain battles, which appear to be rehashes of the entries in his groudbreaking Fatal Victories, most of his calls regarding importance are right on the money, and should shake up the lists written by complacent academics.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but flawed
Review: There's a lot to like about William Weir's 50 Battles That Changed The World. But there are also some problems. I would recommend this book, but only as a companion to other similar works, such as Battles That Changed History by Geoffrey Reagan.
The author has an interesting take on the importance of these 50 battles, preferring to focus on how the battles shaped modern civilization. That is certainly a valid approach. Many to most of his choices are impeccable, but several choice are questionable.
He includes some rather curious choices such as Dublin, the Nika Rebellion, Petrograd, Tanga and Wu-sung. But not Yorktown, Gettysburg, Crecy, El Alamein, Salamis, Blenheim or Dien Bien Phu.
There's 11 pages on Tenochititlan, and nine pages on the battle of Chickamauga, for instance, compared to five on Saratoga and Waterloo.
And listing the Nika Rebellion as the second most important battle of all time? Hard to figure where that is coming from.
There's little to nothing about military strategic and tactics, which is why I think most people read this sort of thing.
There are almost no maps, and the illustrations are small.
Also, there are numerous typos, many of them just careless, such as the caption that says (insert commander here).
Again, it's an interesting take on the world's great battles. Just don't take it as gospel.
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