Glossy white board binding with red title and battlefield image on the front board.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

For the first time, breakthrough computer graphics recreate with unparalleled accuracy every detail of history’s most important battles. Battlefields have been reconstructed in amazing detail allowing you to see how and why the winners won.

Reviews:

• The potential reader needs to be careful about which edition of the book he or she is looking at. The edition I am reviewing is the 2002 edition which starts with the Battle at Cannae in August, 216 BC between Hannibal and the Romans, and ends with Dien Bien Phu, Viet Nam, between November 1953 and May, 1954, between the French and the Viet Minh. John MacDonald started producing this series back in 1984 and I believe the latest edition is 2008. This is an easy read. Lots of maps and pictures. Minimal analysis. I bought this particular edition because it includes the battle for Kohima’s Garrison Hill. Its okay. Not a five star effort. This edition has a couple of things going for it that are worth mentioning. There is a foreword by General Sir John Hackett or Arnhem fame. Its only a couple of pages and worth reading because of his personal reminiscences. The introduction is by Len Deighton, which, in my opinion, doesn’t add much to the book. The last thing this edition has going for it is the selection of battles that are discussed. As mentioned earlier, MacDonald has been pumping out these puppies for some time and he had the luxury of including some lesser known engagements. The engagements that I found interesting were from the Crusades, the Boer War, the Spanish Civil War and the Battle of Solferino (24 June 1859). So, for those of you interested in military history, this is a good introduction. The reading is light, you can whip through a chapter in about a half hour, there’s lots of maps and pictures and there isn’t a lot of heavy analysis by the author regarding tactics and strategies to be waded through. You may come across an engagement which piques your interest in learning more about that particular battle or that particular war.

• This is one volume in a collection of at least 4 other illustrated military history books dealing with battles or the World Wars including the American Civil War . This volume covers a variety of major battles fought from ancient times up to the battle of Dien Bien Phu in the 20th Century. All the volumes published in this series are excellent and provide concise descriptions of the battles or wars but also include a unique assortment of maps, illustrations and photographs to visually portray them. What’s most special and unique about each book in the series are the amazing 3D paintings that render scenes of battles in progress from an aerial perspective. These paintings are fantastic and literally make you, the viewer, feel like you’re there in a way that’s never ever been duplicated in any other illustrated history book since. It’s very easy to recommend any or all of them.