The author explores in detail the history of mounted warfare which in reality is a history of war itself. For over 3,000 years the mounted warrior was a dominant figure, mobility and speed of the horse were invaluable, and the charge itself often the defining moment of any battle. The author has gone to great lengths to make this a highly readable, well researched, beautifully illustrated history. This book will delight everyone interested in military history and those who are thrilled by the special 'romance' of the horse in warfare.

Civil War historians have long been puzzled by Pickett’s seemingly suicidal frontal attack on the Union center at Gettysburg. Here, for the first time, Paul D. Walker reveals Robert E. Lee’s true plan for victory at Gettysburg: a simultaneous strike against the Union center from the front and rear—Pickett’s infantry to charge the front, while Stuart’s cavalry struck the rear. The frontal assault by Pickett went off as scheduled, but as Stuart’s forces approached from the rear, they encountered a Union cavalry contingent. As the forces joined, the Union cavalry leader was quickly killed, and command fell to one of the most dynamic figures in American history—George Armstrong Custer. What followed was America’s greatest cavalry battle: 7,500 Confederate horsemen ranged against 5,000 Union cavalry, Jeb Stuart against George Custer, with the outcome of the Civil War at stake.

Feeling lost in the world and without direction, an African American kid from New York is looking for a way out of Rochester. At only seventeen-years-old, he finds it as a 19D-Cavalry Scout in the United States Army.In this compelling and transparent memoir written by a Purple Heart awarded veteran, David Kendrick, Jr. shares the story of life outside of everything familiar to him, the way he meets his first love, and the bonds that were formed with the special group of men who would become his unit brothers - the 3-61st Cavalry Regiment.When David and his brothers deploy to Iraq in 2006, they fight on the front lines for freedom and for each other. Together, along with joy, they experience agony, misery, and heartbreak. Over time, David learns the true meaning of sacrifice and selfless service. He learns what it means to be a man. He learns what it means to be a soldier. He learns what it means to be . . . Cavalry.

Despite the enduring popular image of the blitzkrieg of World War II, the German Army always depended on horses. It could not have waged war without them. While the Army’s reliance on draft horses to pull artillery, supply wagons, and field kitchens is now generally acknowledged, D. R. Dorondo’s Riders of the Apocalypse examines the history of the German cavalry, a combat arm that not only survived World War I but also rode to war again in 1939. Though concentrating on the period between 1939 and 1945, the book places that history firmly within the larger context of the mounted arm’s development from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to the Third Reich’s surrender. Driven by both internal and external constraints to retain mounted forces after 1918, the German Army effectively did nothing to reduce, much less eliminate, the preponderance of non-mechanized formations during its breakneck expansion under the Nazis after 1933. Instead, politicized command decisions, technical insufficiency, industrial bottlenecks, and, finally, wartime attrition meant that Army leaders were compelled to rely on a steadily growing number of combat horsemen throughout World War II. These horsemen were best represented by the 1st Cavalry Brigade (later Division) which saw combat in Poland, the Netherlands, France, Russia, and Hungary. Their service, however, came to be cruelly dishonored by the horsemen of the 8th Waffen-SS Cavalry Division, a unit whose troopers spent more time killing civilians than fighting enemy soldiers. Throughout the story of these formations, and drawing extensively on both primary and secondary sources, Dorondo shows how the cavalry’s tradition carried on in a German and European world undergoing rapid military industrialization after the mid-nineteenth century. And though Riders of the Apocalypse focuses on the German element of this tradition, it also notes other countries’ continuing (and, in the case of Russia, much more extensive) use of combat horsemen after 1900. However, precisely because the Nazi regime devoted so much effort to portray Germany’s armed forces as fully modern and mechanized, the combat effectiveness of so many German horsemen on the battlefields of Europe until 1945 remains a story that deserves to be more widely known. Dorondo’s work does much to tell that story.

The development of cavalry firearms and the widespread disappearance of armour from the European battlefield saw a decline in the use of the cavalry lance in early modern warfare. However, by 1800 the lance, much changed from its medieval predecessors in both form and function, was back. During the next century the use of the lance spread to the armed forces of almost every Western country, seeing action in every major conflict from the Napoleonic Wars to World War I including the Crimean and Franco-Prussian wars and across the Atlantic in the American Civil War. The lance even reached the colonial conflicts of the Anglo-Sikh and Boer wars. It was not until the disappearance of the mounted warrior from the battlefield that the lance was consigned to history. Featuring specially commissioned artwork and drawing upon a variety of sources, this is the engaging story of the cavalry lance at war during the 19th and 20th centuries, from Waterloo to the Somme.

Another Confederate cavalry raid impends. You hear the snort of an impatient horse, the leathery squeaking of saddles, the low-voiced commands of officers, the muffled cluck of guns cocked in preparation—then the sudden rush of motion, the din of another attack. This classic story seeks to illuminate a little-known theater of the Civil War—the cavalry battles of the Trans-Mississippi West, a region that included Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, the Indian Territory, and part of Louisiana. Stephen B. Oates traces the successes and defeats of the cavalry; its brief reinvigoration under John S. "Rip" Ford, who fought and won the last battle of the war at Palmetto Ranch; and finally, the disintegration of this once-proud fighting force.