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The Face Of Battle

By John Keegan

(12)

| Audio Cassette | 9780736603157

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Book Description

What is it like to be in battle? John Keegan, a senior instructor at Sandhurst, the British Military Academy, speaks for soldiers who were present in the fray.

For examples, Keegan selects Agincourt in 1415, Waterloo in 1815, and the Somme in 1916. What is common about them, what is different?Continue

Critics

Goodbye to All That

How could men fight in battles? What sort of human beings are generals, who deliberately bring them about? It is good that so many people in Britain and America do not know the answers to these questions and now—to judge by recent writing on the topi ... (read full critics)

nybooks published on Mon, 23 Aug 2010

1 Review

Keegan focuses on three battles: Agincourt (Medieval), Waterloo (Napoleon), and the Somme (WWI). This is an inside look at what the battles would have been like for an ordinary solider, which is something that is not often treated in military history (at least not before the World Wars). I liked thi ... (continue)

Keegan focuses on three battles: Agincourt (Medieval), Waterloo (Napoleon), and the Somme (WWI). This is an inside look at what the battles would have been like for an ordinary solider, which is something that is not often treated in military history (at least not before the World Wars). I liked this aspect of it.
What I didn't enjoy about the book was that Keegan spends a great deal of time discussing what should and should not go into a military history and what makes a military history good or bad. At times, this was less a book of military history than a book about the practice of military history. Although in retrospect, it was valuable to me to look into the writing to question how well it actually captured the details of real events and to allow me to read with a bit more critical eye in the future.

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audioreader said on Mar 6, 2012 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback