The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Warfare From Ancient Egypt to Iraq

by Saul David

The most wide-ranging and visually arresting history of wars and warfare ever published, "War: Definitive Visual Guide" documents every major war or significant period of conflict in over 5,000 years of human history.

A must-have reference gift for military enthusiasts and general readers alike, no other book about warfare contains such a diverse selection of imagery including contemporary paintings and photographs, objects and artifacts, and specially commissioned artworks, maps, and diagrams.

"War: Definitive Visual Guide" includes a comprehensive directory of every major war, thematic spreads examining broader topics within the history of warfare, from the role of mercenaries, communications, and the treatment of wounded soldiers, and personal accounts and objects from soldiers and civilians that bring to life the human experience of battle.

From the earliest known Wars in Sumeria and Ancient Egypt War to the occupation of Iraq, "War: Definitive Visual Guide" combines a coherent and compelling spread-by-spread historical narrative with a wealth of supporting features to recount the epic 5,000-year story of warfare and combat through the ages.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, War, Reference, Military Fiction, World History

512 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2012

About the author

SAUL DAVID was born in Monmouth in 1966 and educated at Ampleforth College and Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities (History MA and PhD).

An expert in the wars of the Victorian period, he began writing his first history book when he was twenty-five and has since completed eight more. They include: The Homicidal Earl: The Life of Lord Cardigan (1997), a critically-acclaimed biography of the man who led the Charge of the Light Brigade; The Indian Mutiny:1857 (2002), shortlisted for the Westminster Medal for Military Literature; Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879 (2004), a Waterstone's Military History Book of the Year; and the bestselling Victoria's Wars: The Rise of Empire (2006). In 2007 he signed a three book deal with Hodder & Stoughton to write a series of historical novels set in the late Victorian period. The first, Zulu Hart, was published on 5 March 2009 to critical acclaim with The Times describing it as a 'rattling good yarn' with 'a compelling, sexy hero who could give Cornwell's Sharpe a run for his money'. He is currently writing a history of the British Army.

Reviews

[Michael Smith]

DK has become noted for its graphics-heavy reference works and this one is a prime example. It runs nearly 500 pages of text and covers all aspects of warfare from an Bronze Age to the current decade. The emphasis, naturally, is on the more modern period (the mid-point of the book is roughly the Seven Years War), where there are more details known and more images available. Geographical coverage is heavily Western, but at least there’s rather more than the usual light coverage of internal wars in India, the Middle East, China, and Japan. I’ve read most of the text and it seems quite accurate (within the rounds of reasonable interpretation), but you could similar coverage and similar detail at Wikipedia. It’s the imagery that holds the attention -- paintings, sculpture, monuments, maps, artifacts, reconstructions, modern weapons, and combat photography. The final 150 pages -- thirty percent of the whole volume is given over to a “comprehensive directory of wars, battles, and military statistics,” the entries in which are very brief -- which is the main reason this book isn’t five times as big as it is (and which it certainly could have been, had the same level of detail been maintained throughout). Interspersed among the chronologically arranged articles on campaigns and key battles are a number of pictorial “galleries” (muskets and rifles, helmets, swords, machine guns) and topical pieces on “aspects of war,” including propaganda, ethics in war, POWs, engineering, mercenaries, and so on. Reading sidebar items as you browse is a great time-sink, which the book uses to cover such things as political context, relevant social developments, dynastic rivalries, and brief biographical sketches. But they rather overdo the USA Today-style numerical factoids, e.g., “228,000 -- the number of coins found buried in Viking hordes,” and “88 -- number of towers in the walls encircling Avila.”

There are (naturally) scattered errors. The last ruler of the western Roman empire was Romulus Augustulus, not “Augustus.” And there are odd omissions. The sections on post-WWII guerilla warfare and weapons makes no mention of the ubiquitous AK-47, though they appear in a number of combat photos. You have to go back to a “Gallery” spread on rifles much earlier in the book to find that -- which will only happen by accident since it isn’t indexed, either. In addition to my career as a librarian, I’ve also been a freelance copyeditor and book-indexer since the late 1970s, and I’ve noticed that one effect of the computer revolution in publishing has been that the bean-counters are willing to spend less and less on actual skilled people. If this weren’t the case, they might not have translated part of a Roman soldier’s letter from home as “Great all your messmates.” And this is a featured pull-quote, which is especially embarrassing. And in the article on the 12th-century Gempei wars in Japan, Prince Mochihito’s name is spelled two different ways in the same short paragraph. Somebody wasn’t paying attention.

[Koray]

"...War has always been with us as a violent method of resolving disputes. The earliest communities fought each other for control of food and land. But war in its strictest definition is the state of armed conflict between nations or states, or between groups within the same state (otherwise known as civil war). The first recorded wars between organized armies were fought by the city-states of Sumer in the third millennium BCE. Since then, states have habitually used war as a means of achieving their political ends when all peaceful options have been exhausted. War, according to the Prussian military theorist Clausewitz, “is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means....Scarcely a generation passes in any nation without some exposure to war. Between 1500 BCE and 1860 CE there were in the known world, on average, thirteen years of war to every one year of peace. Virtually all frontiers between nations, races, and religions have been established by wars, and most previous civilizations and empires have expired because of them. The history of the world is primarily the history of war..."

[Duncan.S]

Amazing and informative material. The book covers a vast topic of world history and I finished it with a "One page a day" policy. Each page covered something different explaining the many important things in great detail.

[Indah Threez Lestari]

738 - 2019

[Tom Darrow]

A pretty good overview of military history. Each 2 page spread is broken down into either an era of warfare (like the Greek city states), an individual war (the Vietnam War) or part of a bigger war (WWII in Europe).

Each section has a brief "what happened before" and "what happened after" section, the main body about the war and various pictures of weapons, leaders and battles.

For anyone who reads works of military history, there isn't really anything ground breaking here. The sections are written in a style that is easy enough for a novice to understand, but also includes a little detail.

This book loses points for two main reasons. First, the last 75 pages or so depart from the organization outlined above and has a chronology of battles. Each battle has data on the number of troops involved, the number of casualties and a 2-4 sentence explanation of the battle. The first problem is that for about half of the battles it says "no reliable estimates" or "unknown" for the troops involved or casualties. Some of that information IS known, they just didn't include it. The second problem is the limitation of writing about literally hundreds of battles in 2-4 sentences. By the end of the section, the battles all blur together, which makes the section fairly meaningless.

The next major area where this book loses points is with its editing. There are a few mislabeled pictures, a few battles in the final section have mixed up titles and various other grammatical and organizational issues. It makes the whole book seem rather sloppily done.

[Jade]

Informative book on historical wars, from ancient times to the modern day.

[Walter Bonnet]

Imagine if you could go back in time and experience every war in history, and that is exactly what this book lets you do. The book was published by DK, who has made many books about similar subjects. It is one of the largest and well-researched books about war.
One feature I like about the book is how well-researched it was. Many books often have a few mistakes on what and how things happened, but this one doesn't, and what makes that a good feature is because it is such a big book and it doesn't have any.
Another feature I like is how it just doesn't focus on the major wars, it focuses on every one no matter how big or small it was. This is a good feature because it can help anyone learn about history.
I would recommend this book to anyone trying to learn more about history, one of my favorite books and one i would definitely recommend.

[Kin Guan]

Read out of interest on medieval warfare.