Generals: The Best and Worst Military Commanders

by Gerald Suster

In this engrossing and inclusive work, historian Gerald Suster explores the nobility and folly of war through the ages by examining the work of the men and women whose direction of battle has significantly altered the course of history.Ranging from Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Ghengis Khan and Joan of Arc, through the attack of the Spanish Armada, Napoleon, Nelson and Wellington, the trenches of the First World War and the blitzkreig of the Second, and leading up to the wars in Vietnam, the Falklands and the Gulf, Suster places each military leader in the context of their own time, detailing their psychological make-up, the circumstances of the conflict and analyzing the decisions they made that were to prove crucial turning points in battle.With this perceptive study of the moments when the fates of nations and empires were sealed, Suster illustrates the astonishing application of Intelligence of some generals and the amazing incompetence of The Best and Worst Military commanders brings to life the magic of history, the squalor of ineptitude and the art of winning and losing.

258 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1997

About the author

Gerald Suster was a British revisionist historian, occult writer, and novelist. He was best known for his biographies of Aleister Crowley (The Legacy of the Beast) and Israel Regardie (Crowley's Apprentice), and many novels of horror and the occult.

While working in California, Gerald Suster met Israel Regardie and Gerald Yorke, two of the few remaining occultists who had studied directly under Aleister Crowley... and became a well-known figure in the London occult and pagan scenes.

In 1989 he became a tutor at Boarzell Tutorial College in Sussex; however his teaching career came to an abrupt end when he was featured in an exposé of his occult activities in the News of the World newspaper on 16 April 1989.[3] Suster sued the paper for libel... and got £80,000 of costs from them.

After the case, Gerald Suster & his new wife went on honeymoon to Madrid. On their return, he focused on being a full-time author, producing books of horror fiction, biography, occultism, and erotica. He called his new occupation "my most productive period of creative writing".

(Adapted from Wikipedia.)