Covers principal wars, campaigns, battles and personalities over the past 150 years.

The late Byron Farwell served as an engineer in the British forces of World War II and was an author of at least seven books on various aspects of military history. In this encyclopedia, a labor of love intended for both scholars and general readers, entries include information on wars, revolutions, battles, sieges, spies, soldiers, technical military terms, weapons, and other aspects of 19th-centruy wars and military life. The length of an entry does not necessarily correspond to its importance. Some lesser conflicts and minor personalities are given more space, because information is not readily available elsewhere; and conversely, if information on a topic is widely available, the entry is short. Small bandw images enhance the text. A selected bibliography is included at the end of the volume. Indexing, at least by country or general topic would have improved this otherwise carefully prepared reference. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

A single day in the heat of armed conflict can shape the future of the world. Throughout history, individual battles have inspired the birth of nations, the devastation of cultures and the triumph of revolutions. Yet while some battles rise up as the cornerstones of history, others fade in our cultural memory, forgotten as minor skirmishes. Why is this so? What makes a battle "important"? Celebrated veteran and military expert Michael Lee Lanning offers a provocative response with The Battle 100: The Stories Behind History's Most Influential Battles. Lanning ranks history's 100 greatest battles according to their influence, both immediate and long-term. Thought-provoking and controversial, Lanning's rankings take us to the heart of the battles and reveal their true greatness.

This authoritative volume traces the evolution of the art of warfare in the Greek and Roman worlds between 1600BC and AD 800, from the rise of Mycenaean civilisation to the fall of Ravenna and the eventual decline of the Roman Empire. The book is also, of course, about the great military commanders, such as Alexander and Julius Caesar - men whose feats of generalship still provide material for discussion and admiration in the world's military academies.

"These three stories, set during the summer of 1940, draw on Italo Calvino's memories of his own adolescence during the Second World War, too young to be forced to fight in Mussolini's army but old enough to be conscripted into the Italian youth brigades. The callow narrator of these tales observes the mounting unease of a city girding itself for war, the looting of an occupied French town, and nighttime revels during a blackout. Appearing here in its first English translation, Into the War is one of Calvino's only works of autobiographical fiction. It offers both a glimpse of this writer's extraordinary life and a distilled dram of his wry, ingenious literary voice."--from cover, page [4].