How to Lose a Battle: Foolish Plans and Great Military Blunders

The book while it is not as detailed as some and gets a few facts wrong it is a good example of the direction that historiography has to head to if it is going to survive in the next century. While history majors like me love detail the majority of America and the world finds details boring plus their attention spans are getting shorter all the time unfortunately. Your only choice in dealing with material that has been debated and rehashed 1000 times is to present it in an entertaining format. So eventually what you get here is a book that light, somewhat humorous and not as detailed as others but people could learn something from it. Overall-Some would call it watering down history to those people I would say that there are other books you can read if this one doesn't tickle your fancy.

How To Lose a Battle, edited by Bill Fawcett, is a fun filled jog through the history of military mistakes and plans that seemed good on paper but failed on the battlefield. With help from William R. Forstchen, Brian Thomsen, and Douglas Niles Mr. Fawcett gives it to us straight. For example, while Alexander the Great was good, very, very good, he was also up against Darius the Third who was a coward. The battle of Cannae, the Second Crusade, Gettysburg, the air battle over Britain and even Pearl Harbor are all put on display, sliced open, their guts examined and the flaws pointed out with logic. But this is not a cold, heartless series of essays. No, the authors have a lot of fun pointing out all the flaws, the blunders and stupidity of the commanders who made the worst military decisions ever. Well, the worst up to now.

Bill Fawcett has combined sound analysis with a light hearted approach to the review of some major battles in history. This makes for informed, easy reading.

This book has 37 chapters written by 5 different authors. Despite this, the authors' writing styles are quite similar, i.e., simple and friendly prose that is generally engaging. However, as a result of this multi authorship, some chapters are short and concise such that a given event is recounted in 5 to 8 pages, while others are rather long-winded and occupy over 20 pages. Several of the events in this book have been recounted elsewhere by other authors in an equally short, concise but frequently in a pleasant tongue-in-cheek style - something which is not as pronounced in this case. I have given this book 4 stars simply because, although it is a good read, to me, it seems to lack that tiny spark that would make it a 5 star work. The several editorial mistakes that it contains may have contributed to that less than perfect score. This book could be of interest to anyone, although some detailed analyses may be of particular interest to military history buffs.

While this is a fun and entertaining read it is also very good history. I am a PhD student specializing in military history and I still learned a great deal from this book.