Impressive overview of important battles. Most are chosen because some new technology changed warfare from that point on. Fairly detailed, though half a dozen pages per battle means things are necessarily simplified. A few minor errors. Plenty of illustrations and maps. An enjoyable read and good reference. ( )

A coffee table book that is dull and in need of an editor. The book states that its purpose is to give the reader a set of battles that changed how wars were fought. The problem is that this is usually summed up in a little paragraph that hardly leaves you with an impression that the battle mentioned really changed warfare. Add to this very dull and generic overviews of the battle makes this one tedious read. However as dull as the main text is it is essentially accurate yet the the text that explain the images is not. For example in the section on the battle Cynoscephalae on one page the image and text insert says that the Hastati was a spear welding infantry man who fought in the third line of battle in the roman army (which is untrue this was actually the Triarii) only to have main text and another insert contradict this a few pages later correctly stating that the Hastati fought in the first line of battle. Another example is in the chapter on the Battle of Sadowa (Koniggrarz) where the image text insert says that Emperor Frederick I (aka the medieval king Frederick Barbarossa) was the big winner of Sadowa which is funny as Barbarossa had been dead for 676 years so unless he built a time machine to warp to the 1860's I don't think that Barbarossa was the big winner at the battle. Who they actually meant and whose image they used was Crown Prince Frederick later Frederick III which the main text states on the very next page! I know that history books get things wrong sometimes but usually this is obscure facts or based on a particular interpretation of data or events but these are basic facts that you could easily check in even the most out of date encyclopaedia.
What I think happens is that the authors who are actually historians wrote and submitted the main text for each chapter to the publisher and then the images and insert text was organized by someone else who ether did not have access to the text or was in a rush and didn't care if facts were wrong. The one think that was nice about the book and saved it from a one start rating was that even with the basic historical mistake there were and abundance of very nice images ranging from contemporary pieces to modern line drawings. Also i liked the colored battle maps in each chapter. I know i shouldn't expect much from coffee table books but I at least think they should get the facts right and be entertaining, which is the main purpose for these kinds of books ( )