Author: Victor Davis Hanson Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691156360 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 277
Book Description
Timeless lessons from the military strategies of the ancient Greeks and Romans In this prequel to the now-classic Makers of Modern Strategy, Victor Davis Hanson, a leading scholar of ancient military history, gathers prominent thinkers to explore key facets of warfare, strategy, and foreign policy in the Greco-Roman world. From the Persian Wars to the final defense of the Roman Empire, Makers of Ancient Strategy demonstrates that the military thinking and policies of the ancient Greeks and Romans remain surprisingly relevant for understanding conflict in the modern world. The book reveals that much of the organized violence witnessed today—such as counterterrorism, urban fighting, insurgencies, preemptive war, and ethnic cleansing—has ample precedent in the classical era. The book examines the preemption and unilateralism used to instill democracy during Epaminondas's great invasion of the Peloponnesus in 369 BC, as well as the counterinsurgency and terrorism that characterized Rome's battles with insurgents such as Spartacus, Mithridates, and the Cilician pirates. The collection looks at the urban warfare that became increasingly common as more battles were fought within city walls, and follows the careful tactical strategies of statesmen as diverse as Pericles, Demosthenes, Alexander, Pyrrhus, Caesar, and Augustus. Makers of Ancient Strategy shows how Greco-Roman history sheds light on wars of every age. In addition to the editor, the contributors are David L. Berkey, Adrian Goldsworthy, Peter J. Heather, Tom Holland, Donald Kagan, John W. I. Lee, Susan Mattern, Barry Strauss, and Ian Worthington.
Author: Victor Davis Hanson Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 1400834252 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 278
Book Description
Timeless lessons from the military strategies of the ancient Greeks and Romans In this prequel to the now-classic Makers of Modern Strategy, Victor Davis Hanson, a leading scholar of ancient military history, gathers prominent thinkers to explore key facets of warfare, strategy, and foreign policy in the Greco-Roman world. From the Persian Wars to the final defense of the Roman Empire, Makers of Ancient Strategy demonstrates that the military thinking and policies of the ancient Greeks and Romans remain surprisingly relevant for understanding conflict in the modern world. The book reveals that much of the organized violence witnessed today—such as counterterrorism, urban fighting, insurgencies, preemptive war, and ethnic cleansing—has ample precedent in the classical era. The book examines the preemption and unilateralism used to instill democracy during Epaminondas's great invasion of the Peloponnesus in 369 BC, as well as the counterinsurgency and terrorism that characterized Rome's battles with insurgents such as Spartacus, Mithridates, and the Cilician pirates. The collection looks at the urban warfare that became increasingly common as more battles were fought within city walls, and follows the careful tactical strategies of statesmen as diverse as Pericles, Demosthenes, Alexander, Pyrrhus, Caesar, and Augustus. Makers of Ancient Strategy shows how Greco-Roman history sheds light on wars of every age. In addition to the editor, the contributors are David L. Berkey, Adrian Goldsworthy, Peter J. Heather, Tom Holland, Donald Kagan, John W. I. Lee, Susan Mattern, Barry Strauss, and Ian Worthington.
Author: Victor Davis Hanson Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 278
Book Description
In this prequel to the now-classic Makers of Modern Strategy, Victor Davis Hanson, a leading scholar of ancient military history, gathers prominent thinkers to explore key facets of warfare, strategy, and foreign policy in the Greco-Roman world. From the Persian Wars to the final defense of the Roman Empire, Makers of Ancient Strategy demonstrates that the military thinking and policies of the ancient Greeks and Romans remain surprisingly relevant for understanding conflict in the modern world. The book reveals that much of the organized violence witnessed today--such as counterterrorism, urba.
Author: Sir Lawrence Freedman Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199349908 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 768
Book Description
Selected as a Financial Times Best Book of 2013 In Strategy: A History, Sir Lawrence Freedman, one of the world's leading authorities on war and international politics, captures the vast history of strategic thinking, in a consistently engaging and insightful account of how strategy came to pervade every aspect of our lives. The range of Freedman's narrative is extraordinary, moving from the surprisingly advanced strategy practiced in primate groups, to the opposing strategies of Achilles and Odysseus in The Iliad, the strategic advice of Sun Tzu and Machiavelli, the great military innovations of Baron Henri de Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, the grounding of revolutionary strategy in class struggles by Marx, the insights into corporate strategy found in Peter Drucker and Alfred Sloan, and the contributions of the leading social scientists working on strategy today. The core issue at the heart of strategy, the author notes, is whether it is possible to manipulate and shape our environment rather than simply become the victim of forces beyond one's control. Time and again, Freedman demonstrates that the inherent unpredictability of this environment-subject to chance events, the efforts of opponents, the missteps of friends-provides strategy with its challenge and its drama. Armies or corporations or nations rarely move from one predictable state of affairs to another, but instead feel their way through a series of states, each one not quite what was anticipated, requiring a reappraisal of the original strategy, including its ultimate objective. Thus the picture of strategy that emerges in this book is one that is fluid and flexible, governed by the starting point, not the end point. A brilliant overview of the most prominent strategic theories in history, from David's use of deception against Goliath, to the modern use of game theory in economics, this masterful volume sums up a lifetime of reflection on strategy.
Author: Beatrice Heuser Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 113949256X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
Is there a 'Western way of war' which pursues battles of annihilation and single-minded military victory? Is warfare on a path to ever greater destructive force? This magisterial account answers these questions by tracing the history of Western thinking about strategy - the employment of military force as a political instrument - from antiquity to the present day. Assessing sources from Vegetius to contemporary America, and with a particular focus on strategy since the Napoleonic Wars, Beatrice Heuser explores the evolution of strategic thought, the social institutions, norms and patterns of behaviour within which it operates, the policies that guide it and the cultures that influence it. Ranging across technology and warfare, total warfare and small wars as well as land, sea, air and nuclear warfare, she demonstrates that warfare and strategic thinking have fluctuated wildly in their aims, intensity, limitations and excesses over the past two millennia.
Author: Ralph D. Sawyer Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 1541674294 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 488
Book Description
The Seven Military Classics is one of the most profound studies of warfare ever written, a stanchion in sinological and military history. It presents an Eastern tradition of strategic thought that emphasizes outwitting one's opponent through speed, stealth, flexibility, and a minimum of force -- an approach very different from that stressed in the West. Safeguarded for centuries by the ruling elite of imperial China, even in modern times these writings have been known only to a handful of Western specialists. This volume contains seven separate essays, written between 500 BCE and 700 CE, that preserve the essential tenets of strategy distilled from the experience of the most brilliant warriors of ancient China.
Author: Colin S. Gray Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780198280309 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 412
Book Description
Modern Strategy explains how strategic reasoning makes sense of the great complexity of war on land, at sea, in the air, in space and even cyberspace.
Author: A. Wess Mitchell Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691196443 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 422
Book Description
The Habsburg Empire's grand strategy for outmaneuvering and outlasting stronger rivals in a complicated geopolitical world The Empire of Habsburg Austria faced more enemies than any other European great power. Flanked on four sides by rivals, it possessed few of the advantages that explain successful empires. Yet somehow Austria endured, outlasting Ottoman sieges, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon. A. Wess Mitchell tells the story of how this cash-strapped, polyglot empire survived for centuries in Europe's most dangerous neighborhood without succumbing to the pressures of multisided warfare. He shows how the Habsburgs played the long game in geopolitics, corralling friend and foe alike into voluntarily managing the empire's lengthy frontiers and extending a benign hegemony across the turbulent lands of middle Europe. The Grand Strategy of the Habsburg Empire offers lessons on how to navigate a messy geopolitical map, stand firm without the advantage of military predominance, and prevail against multiple rivals.
Author: Simon Anglim Publisher: ISBN: 9781909160460 Category : Military art and science Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
From the Publisher: This essential guide to ancient warfare describes the fighting methods of soldiers in Europe and the Middle East in an age before gunpowder. From a detailed examination of the individual components of an ancient army and their equipment, to a fascinating exploration of ancient battle strategies, siege warfare, and naval battles, it explores the unique tactics required to win battles with the technology available. Using specially commissioned color and black-and-white artwork and 24 full-color tactical maps, this book shows in great detail the methods by which armies, including Assyrians and Roman forces, prevailed over their foes, and why other armies were less successful. This is a must-read for any reader interested in ancient warfare.
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Author: Victor Davis Hanson
Author: Sir Lawrence Freedman
Author: Beatrice Heuser
Author: Edward Mead Earle
Author: Ralph D. Sawyer
Author: Colin S. Gray
Author: A. Wess Mitchell
Author: Simon Anglim