Series: Essential Histories

Updated and revised from the popular 2002 edition, with full-colour maps and new images throughout, this is a concise study of the American Revolutionary War. The American Revolution, or the American War of Independence, has been characterised politically as a united political uprising of the American colonies and militarily as a guerrilla campaign of colonists against the inflexible British military...

Few centuries in world history have had such a profound and long-lasting impact as the first hundred years of Islamic history. In this book, David Nicolle examines the extensive Islamic conquests between AD 632 and 750. These years saw the religion and culture of Islam erupt from the Arabian Peninsula and spread across an area far larger than that of...

A detailed, fully illustrated overview of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, one of the most important conflicts of the ancient world. Julius Caesar was one of the most ambitious and successful politicians of the late Roman Republic, and his short but bloody conquest of the Celtic tribes led to the establishment of the Roman province of Gaul (modern France). Caesar's commentaries...

Born amid immense suffering and bloodshed, the Kingdom of Jerusalem remained a battlefield for almost 200 years. The Crusades gave rise to the Military Orders of the Templars and Hospitallers, and served as a backdrop to the careers of some of history's most famous leaders, including Richard 'The Lionheart' and Saladin. At times, the savagery of the Crusaders left their...

The Russo-Japanese war saw the first defeat of a major European imperialist power by an Asian country. When Japanese and Russian expansionist interests collided over Manchuria and Korea, the Tsar assumed Japan would never dare to fight. However, after years of planning, Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russian Port Arthur, on the Liaoyang Peninsula in 1904, and the...

More than three and a half centuries have passed since the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), but this most devastating of wars in the early modern period continues to capture the imagination of readers. This book reveals why. In this accessible, concise guide, Richard Bonney explains one of the first wars where contemporaries stressed the importance...

Fully illustrated with colour maps and images, this is an accessible introduction to one of history’s most heavily romanticised and mythologised campaigns. Dr Gregory Fremont-Barnes presents a detailed overview of the Forty-five Rebellion, dispelling the myths that have grown up around battles like Culloden and the figures of the Highlanders. Led by the charismatic Bonnie Prince Charlie and fought in...

An accessible introduction to the wars against the Barbary pirates, which shaped the early United States. It not only signalled the determination of the United States to throw off its tributary status, liberate its citizens from slavery in North Africa, and reassert its right to trade freely upon the seas: they enabled America to regain its sense of national dignity....

The history of the Mongol conquests is a catalogue of superlatives. No army in the world has ever conquered so much territory, and few armies have provoked such terror as the Mongol hordes. So vast was the extent of the Mongol Empire that the samurai of Japan and the Teutonic Knights of Prussia had each fought the same enemy while...

Byzantium at War survived for 800 years, yet its dominions and power fluctuated dramatically during that time. John Haldon tells the story from the days when the Empire was barely clinging on to survival, to the age when its fabulous wealth attracted Viking mercenaries and Asian nomad warriors to its armies, their very appearance on the field enough to bring...

Great battles and famous commanders dominated the military history of the Civil War in the Eastern Theater during the period 1863-1865. The American Civil War (3) includes revealing details of the clash at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the costliest battle ever waged in the Western Hemisphere. Contrary to common belief, it puts forward the theory that it was not a great turning...

Union military forces suffered momentary defeat followed by sustained success in the Western Theater during the second half of the American Civil War. Following the Union's defeat at Chickamauga, Ulysses S. Grant took command at Chattanooga and orchestrated a striking victory which paved the way for a Union advance against Atlanta, a Confederate city second in importance only to Richmond....

The Palestine War has been by far the most important military encounter in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This book examines the origins of the war and its progression through two distinct stages: the guerrilla warfare between the Arab and Jewish communities of Mandatory Palestine, and the conventional inter-state war between the State of Israel and the invading Arab...

This book unravels the complicated and tragic events of the Eastern Front in the First World War. The author details Russia's sudden attack on German forces, despite her inadequate resources. A crushing defeat at Tannenberg was followed by Germany inflicting humiliation after humiliation on desperate Russian troops. For a while, those forces led by General Brusilov and facing Austria-Hungary fared...

More than 80 years on, the Great War - and particularly the great battles such as the Somme and Verdun - continues to fascinate us and to cast long shadows over the world in which we live. For Britain, the effort and sacrifice involved in creating and sustaining its first-ever and biggest-ever mass citizen army, and in helping to defeat...

In this, the second volume covering the war on the Western Front, Peter Simkins describes the last great battles of attrition at Arras, on the Aisne and at Passchendaele in 1917. Then he moves on to relate the successive offensives launched by Germany in the spring and summer of 1918 in an effort to achieve victory or a favourable peace...

A concise guide to the war with Mexico, one of the most decisive conflicts in American history. After smashing Mexico's armies, the young republic bestrode the North American continent like a colossus with one leg anchored on the Atlantic seaboard and the other on the Pacific. It was a bitter, hard-fought war that raged across Mexico through the northern deserts,...

The Great Plains cover the central two-thirds of the United States, and during the nineteenth century were home to some of the largest and most powerful Native American tribes on the continent. The conflict between those tribes and the colonists from the Old World lasted about one hundred and fifty years, and required the resources of five nations—Spain, Mexico, the...

The culmination of decades of nationalist aspiration and cynical Realpolitik, the Second War of Italian Unification saw Italy transformed from a patchwork of minor states dominated by the Habsburg Austrians into a unified kingdom under the Piedmontese House of Savoy. Unlike many existing accounts, which approach the events of 1859–61 from a predominantly French perspective, this study draws upon a...

While many of the participants were the same as the First World War, this conflict was far more than a re-match of 1914-1918. Robin Havers' concise guide shows that the Second World War was even more destructive than the first, and the added ideological element meant that this war was far crueller. The Second World War (2) details the first...

This book examines the seminal Northwest Europe campaign of the Second World War. This hard-fought campaign conducted by the Western Allies against the Germans during 1944-45 represented, for the former, the decisive theatre of the entire Second World War. From the desperate and risk-laden D-Day landings on 6 June 1944 to the rapid charge through western and central Germany in...

The Spanish conquest of Mexico was one of the most difficult military expeditions in history, and in achieving it, Hernan Cortes proved himself as one of the ablest European generals of all time. The Spanish Invasion of Mexico 1519–1521 explains the background of the Aztec Empire and the arrival and presence of the conquistadores in Mexico. It describes the lives...