The Anatomy of Error: Ancient Military Disasters and Their Lessons for Modern Strategists

not a lot of colorful language, as others have said, it IS a fairly dry book to read. however, when it comes to reading military history and analysis I prefer a "Just the Facts" approach. there's a touch of revisionism here and there, but in this case it appears to be SENSIBLE revisionism. I'm mostly a student of WWI (and WWII) history... so it was a bit of a leap for me--but it was worth it. the book was interesting and well-written enough where I'd like to read MORE about this subject.

This is one of those books that's obscure, and shouldn't be. The authors are a pair of history professors, who in this book analyze the course of Ancient Military History over the course of a century or so, and discuss why, in eight separate instances, one side or the other in a conflict failed to achieve their objectives, often with catastrophic results. These analyses are frankly very interesting, even if (as was the case with me) you don't know that much about Ancient Military History in the first place. The authors do a good job of providing a context for each conflict and battle or campaign that resulted in the disaster, and they spend a good deal of time discussing things like what the personalities knew at the time and what they guessed, and what they intended. This leads to much fruitful discussion of the campaigns, each of which seems to be chosen to illustrate the point the authors are trying to make. For instance, the chapter on Hannibal essentially points out that the great general won many battles, but had little idea how to conclude a war, and suffered as a result. There are other similar discussions of other episodes from the period, from Alexander the Great to the Roman emporer Julian about six hundred years later. I enjoyed this book a great deal. I understand that Ancient Military History isn't that popular a subject, and that this makes this book less than totally appealling, but frankly there's a great deal to be learned here, and I would recommend this book highly to anyone wishing to study strategy, especially in the sense of formulating and implementing it.

This case study of several military situations in ancient Greece and Rome, from Xeres to Mark Anthony, focuses on the strategic mistakes made by each culture along the way. It makes a good companion volume for Barbara Tuchman's "March of Folly."