100 Turning Points in Military History: The Critical Decisions, Key Events, and Breakthrough Inventions and Discoveries That Shaped Warfare Around the World

by Alan Axelrod

The typical military history presents a chronicle of battles and wars and the commanders and troops who fought them. This book takes a different approach. It presents battles and wars and people aplenty, but they are not its ultimate subjects. This book is about the turning points that not only make military history dynamic but crucial to the story of humanity and civilization. This book is about the decisions, acts, innovations, errors, ideas, successes, and failures that shaped the evolution of military art and science—strategy, tactics, and technology—and, in doing so, shaped the course of world history.

Here are the 100 points—from the birth of warfare in the Battle of Megiddo, 1457 BC, to the ongoing evolution of military history on its newest battlefield, cyberspace—at which the path of the warrior decisively turned on its long journey to where we find ourselves today.

Genres: History

368 pages, Hardcover

Published August 26, 2019

About the author

Alan Axelrod, Ph.D., is a prolific author of history, business and management books. As of October 2018, he had written more than 150 books, as noted in an online introduction by Lynn Ware Peek before an interview with Axelrod on the National Public Radio station KPCW. Axelrod resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Should have had 50 battles with the chapters being twice as long

[Tony Laplume · Rating 3 out of 5]

Axelrod, as in his similar book on U.S. history, provides a handy survey that is nevertheless riddled with the absence of a historian’s necessary objective stance, and even more frequently guilty of failing to interpret imaginatively the links between events, and by choosing some “turning points” and ignoring others, creates an overall impression of academic incompetence. His rush, when he thinks there’s a clear mandate, to follow a popular narrative is the most obvious failure of the results.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written and interesting but tries to cover too many turning points. The book averages about 3 pages per turning point. Hard to do justice to these battles in 3 pages.

[Peter Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very useful book ,especially for the general reader like me,that covers all military history in short accessible chapters.A great book to dip into to learn or refresh your memory.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Basic essays on historical events.