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Fields of Battle: The Wars for North America
At once a grand tour of the battlefields of North America and an unabashedly personal tribute to the military prowess of an essentially unwarlike people. • "[A] magisterial narrative history, enriched by an authorial voice."-- The Washington Post
Fields of Battle spans more than two centuries and the expanse of a continent to show how the immense spaces of North America shaped the wars that were fought on its soil.
Fields of Battle spans more than two centuries and the expanse of a continent to show how the immense spaces of North America shaped the wars that were fought on its soil.
348 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
John Keegan
130 books786 followersSir John Desmond Patrick Keegan, OBE, FRSL was a British military historian, lecturer and journalist. He published many works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime and intelligence warfare as well as the psychology of battle.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
November 3, 2009
Fields of Battle is John Keegan's study of warfare in North America. In chapters on the French and Indian War, the Revolution, the Civil War, the Indian Wars (as well as a brief coda on flight and strategic bombing) Keegan demonstrates that America's peculiar geography played a major role in shaping the military and political outcomes that led to today's United States.
He keeps his nose to the ground, revisiting the sites of important military engagements, which, he points out, frequently recur (the Hudson corridor during the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars; the Yorktown Peninsula during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars), in order to study the land and the strategic role geography played in those specific battles.
As a Westerner, I am new to the Eastern states, its rivers and mountains, and the positioning of its cities. Fields of Battle provides a very interesting insight into the strategic importance of these mountains and waterways (the Hudson, the James, the St Lawrence) and gives a sense of meaning to what often feels like the arbitrary placement of cities. I had driven through Richmond six times without realizing it was positioned on the James. I had no idea you could canoe from Quebec to New York City.
Until the railroad, water travel was by far the most energy efficient mode of travel, and though North America is not transversed by a single waterway, the vast portion of it inside the Mississippi-Great Lakes-St Lawrence system can be easily reached via a network of natural portages caused by back flooding during the last Ice Age. Control of these portages was instrumental in the creation of political demarcations between first the French and British and later British and Americans.
In the same way, the Union's control of the waterways that were the agrarian South's principal means of transport, and Grant's brilliant understanding of the geography of the South, predetermined the outcome of the Civil War long before the bloody atrition of the Eastern theater resolved itself. Keegan is fascinated with Grant, as with Washington: both men surveyors and frontier explorers. Particularly as compared to McClellan, who never grasped that war in America was of a strategically different kind than war in Europe because of the particular nature of American geography. The South, Keegan points out, is the size of Europe.
In a sense this is the thesis of the book: that America is geologically unique, that the rapid populating of it was historically unique and created war between the powers that fought to control it, and that those military leaders who best understood the unique nature of American geography were the inevitable conquerors of it. A study of war in America, in Keegan's brilliant thinking, is as much about America as about war.
Fields of Battle, in a sense, is two books: Keegan's study of war, and Keegan's autobiographical reminiscences and meditations on his extensive personal travels in the United States. Keegan loves the United States, and has visited often, first as a pioneering Oxford exchange student on a reverse Rhodes scholarship who toured the battlefields of the Civil War in a seersucker suit and a borrowed car; later as an eminent historian invited to lecture at various military bases and universities; once even to counsel the US President.
While the book on war is fascinating, beautifully researched, and original, the book on America is in someways better. In it, as in some passages of his other books, Keegan reveals his true character. He is a delightful man, more Bill Bryson than JFC Fuller. At times, the study of war feels like an excuse for a very interesting young man to take a lifelong holiday. That he provides such brilliant history along with such a touching and insightful travelogue, speaks to Keegan's singularity as a man as well as a historian.
My only quibbles with the book are: there is hardly a mention of the two wars that shaped North America's southerly orientation: the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War. While both may have been fought outside the extent borders of the United States, the proximity to Mexico and the Caribbean, the eventual positioning of the border along the Rio Grande, and the strategic value of the Caribbean islands to Gulf coast shipping all fit easily within the parameters of the book. Their absence is felt. Secondly, Keegan comes down hard on the Plains Indians for refusing to adapt to the encroachment of Europeans. On this, I don't find his thinking very balanced or the outcomes of that thinking very justified. In sum, however, this is a wonderfully written, highly insightful, and touchingly personal book by one of our finest historians.
He keeps his nose to the ground, revisiting the sites of important military engagements, which, he points out, frequently recur (the Hudson corridor during the French and Indian and Revolutionary Wars; the Yorktown Peninsula during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars), in order to study the land and the strategic role geography played in those specific battles.
As a Westerner, I am new to the Eastern states, its rivers and mountains, and the positioning of its cities. Fields of Battle provides a very interesting insight into the strategic importance of these mountains and waterways (the Hudson, the James, the St Lawrence) and gives a sense of meaning to what often feels like the arbitrary placement of cities. I had driven through Richmond six times without realizing it was positioned on the James. I had no idea you could canoe from Quebec to New York City.
Until the railroad, water travel was by far the most energy efficient mode of travel, and though North America is not transversed by a single waterway, the vast portion of it inside the Mississippi-Great Lakes-St Lawrence system can be easily reached via a network of natural portages caused by back flooding during the last Ice Age. Control of these portages was instrumental in the creation of political demarcations between first the French and British and later British and Americans.
In the same way, the Union's control of the waterways that were the agrarian South's principal means of transport, and Grant's brilliant understanding of the geography of the South, predetermined the outcome of the Civil War long before the bloody atrition of the Eastern theater resolved itself. Keegan is fascinated with Grant, as with Washington: both men surveyors and frontier explorers. Particularly as compared to McClellan, who never grasped that war in America was of a strategically different kind than war in Europe because of the particular nature of American geography. The South, Keegan points out, is the size of Europe.
In a sense this is the thesis of the book: that America is geologically unique, that the rapid populating of it was historically unique and created war between the powers that fought to control it, and that those military leaders who best understood the unique nature of American geography were the inevitable conquerors of it. A study of war in America, in Keegan's brilliant thinking, is as much about America as about war.
Fields of Battle, in a sense, is two books: Keegan's study of war, and Keegan's autobiographical reminiscences and meditations on his extensive personal travels in the United States. Keegan loves the United States, and has visited often, first as a pioneering Oxford exchange student on a reverse Rhodes scholarship who toured the battlefields of the Civil War in a seersucker suit and a borrowed car; later as an eminent historian invited to lecture at various military bases and universities; once even to counsel the US President.
While the book on war is fascinating, beautifully researched, and original, the book on America is in someways better. In it, as in some passages of his other books, Keegan reveals his true character. He is a delightful man, more Bill Bryson than JFC Fuller. At times, the study of war feels like an excuse for a very interesting young man to take a lifelong holiday. That he provides such brilliant history along with such a touching and insightful travelogue, speaks to Keegan's singularity as a man as well as a historian.
My only quibbles with the book are: there is hardly a mention of the two wars that shaped North America's southerly orientation: the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War. While both may have been fought outside the extent borders of the United States, the proximity to Mexico and the Caribbean, the eventual positioning of the border along the Rio Grande, and the strategic value of the Caribbean islands to Gulf coast shipping all fit easily within the parameters of the book. Their absence is felt. Secondly, Keegan comes down hard on the Plains Indians for refusing to adapt to the encroachment of Europeans. On this, I don't find his thinking very balanced or the outcomes of that thinking very justified. In sum, however, this is a wonderfully written, highly insightful, and touchingly personal book by one of our finest historians.
July 29, 2020
The last John Keegan book I will ever read. Equal parts incredibly tedious and overtly racist.
The book was not billed as Keegan's travelogue of America, but that takes up about 30 percent! Forts in America as a connecting theme is so loose as to be unworkable. His narrative of the culmination of the plains wars reads like an Orwell satire.
The book was not billed as Keegan's travelogue of America, but that takes up about 30 percent! Forts in America as a connecting theme is so loose as to be unworkable. His narrative of the culmination of the plains wars reads like an Orwell satire.
June 12, 2018
Meet the real John Keegan. It's not pretty, but it's honest, which is why the book got 3 stars rather than even fewer.
The best part is the first one-fifth. It's not about any particular battle, or any particular geography behind a battle or campaign. Rather, it's about Keegan's impressions of American from his various trips.
He apparently thought that 1990s America was the best of 1950s Eisenhower picket-fence America mixed with an honest addressing, and near-solving, of racism. At least that's the impression he leaves me. Keegan's favorite part of America is the South, which he calls the most European. (Reality? In recent years, Europeans have said they consider San Francisco the most European city in America.) Keegan talks in the written version of hallowed whispers about Episcopalian vestries and the Southern pace and sense of life. It's not the slower pace, as he's in places like Richmond and Charleston, but rather, it seems, the Southern grandeur.
The grandeur of the lost cause. Which issue he never discusses.
His racial stance becomes much more clear in the last main chapter, which is about the wars with the Plains Indians. In one spot, he calls them untrustworthy repeated treaty-breakers, while never saying similar about the US government. Even worse, to put it into today's language, he then accuses the Plains Indians of Plains Indians "privilege" for failure to stand aside and let industries white settlers farm this often unfarmable land after all the bison are killed.
No, really! (Well, he doesn't discuss the near unfarmability of much of the High Plains.)
At this point, he had come to seem like a cut or two above, but no more than that, of a genteel racist.
Even worse, his sense of American geography is shakiest here. Unless we've flattened the Continental Divide with nuclear bombs, the Green River ain't a tributary of the Platte!
But, I didn't rank it below 3 stars in part because this honest look at John Keegan was offered without either guile or vim.
That said, now that I know more about Keegan's political background ... and some particulars of his military history writing I didn't know before, this doesn't surprise me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ke...
The best part is the first one-fifth. It's not about any particular battle, or any particular geography behind a battle or campaign. Rather, it's about Keegan's impressions of American from his various trips.
He apparently thought that 1990s America was the best of 1950s Eisenhower picket-fence America mixed with an honest addressing, and near-solving, of racism. At least that's the impression he leaves me. Keegan's favorite part of America is the South, which he calls the most European. (Reality? In recent years, Europeans have said they consider San Francisco the most European city in America.) Keegan talks in the written version of hallowed whispers about Episcopalian vestries and the Southern pace and sense of life. It's not the slower pace, as he's in places like Richmond and Charleston, but rather, it seems, the Southern grandeur.
The grandeur of the lost cause. Which issue he never discusses.
His racial stance becomes much more clear in the last main chapter, which is about the wars with the Plains Indians. In one spot, he calls them untrustworthy repeated treaty-breakers, while never saying similar about the US government. Even worse, to put it into today's language, he then accuses the Plains Indians of Plains Indians "privilege" for failure to stand aside and let industries white settlers farm this often unfarmable land after all the bison are killed.
No, really! (Well, he doesn't discuss the near unfarmability of much of the High Plains.)
At this point, he had come to seem like a cut or two above, but no more than that, of a genteel racist.
Even worse, his sense of American geography is shakiest here. Unless we've flattened the Continental Divide with nuclear bombs, the Green River ain't a tributary of the Platte!
But, I didn't rank it below 3 stars in part because this honest look at John Keegan was offered without either guile or vim.
That said, now that I know more about Keegan's political background ... and some particulars of his military history writing I didn't know before, this doesn't surprise me. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ke...
January 10, 2008
Ostensibly this is a history of American wars (Revolution, 1812, Civil War, Indian Wars) but it really plays more like a nostalgic travelogue and a survey of American geography and topography. An interesting note for Keegan fans: his description of Little Bighorn drips with contempt for both sides. He is normally (perhaps overly) reverent of warriors but he has nothing but disdain for Custer's sloppy bravado and roundly dismisses the territorial claims of the plains Indians. An interesting work for students of American history especially.
February 7, 2021
The original title Warpaths: Travels of a Military Historian in North America is much more apt. The book is a love letter to America. It starts with his first encounter with an American officer during his WWII childhood. He finally comes to America in 1957 through a grant that enabled him to travel the deep south and tour Civil War battlefields. He was delighted by the spirit, culture and friendliness of America. The book continues with the 9 year long 7 Years War which was instigated by a very young George Washington near Pittsburg. He includes a very clear history of the exploration and settlement of Canada by the Portuguese and later French fishermen. Cartier and Champlain's mapping are applauded. However, the 3 main maps in the book all had at least one error in the name of rivers and Keegan complicates it further by mentioning that the Mohawk river flows to Lake Ontario rather than to the Hudson. Keegan continues with the American Revolution which he details why so many battles toward the end happen in the South and notes that 750 Virginians marched the 500 miles south from New Jersey in only 28 days. He then looks at the Civil War concentrating on the battles of the Peninsula. The final military section is the Indian
Wars in the Plains. He discusses this in a very fair way. In each section he includes many anecdotes about people he met and how he traveled around the states. The very last section was a surprise as he indulges in his love of American airplane ingenuity discussing flight from the start of the Wright Brothers' experiments on Kitty Hawk, how Glenn Curtiss attempted to steal their patents through fraud and the development of the Flying Fortress which saved his country.
This is an excellent book. Be prepared to end up researching all sorts of tidbits from the book.
Wars in the Plains. He discusses this in a very fair way. In each section he includes many anecdotes about people he met and how he traveled around the states. The very last section was a surprise as he indulges in his love of American airplane ingenuity discussing flight from the start of the Wright Brothers' experiments on Kitty Hawk, how Glenn Curtiss attempted to steal their patents through fraud and the development of the Flying Fortress which saved his country.
This is an excellent book. Be prepared to end up researching all sorts of tidbits from the book.
June 24, 2017
I've read and enjoyed a lot of books by John Keegan who offers insight into historical subjects sometimes not found elsewhere. That being said, "Fields of Battle; The Wars of North America" is a rather odd book. It is part Keegan's memoir, part travelogue and part history. Instead of Americas Wars, he offers some analysis of four military campaigns which occurred on the North American Continent: the Quebec Campaign of the French and Indian War, the Yorktown campaign of the American Revolution, the Peninsula Campaign of the Civil War and the Little Big Horn Campaign of the Indian Wars. He could have included the Mexican Campaign of the Mexican War but chose to completely ignore anything south of the US border. It was not a bad book, it was just difficult to determine what kind of book it was trying to be. There was a lot of good information provided but also a lot of straying from the point and rambling about.However, it was John Keegan and it is a joy to read a book by someone who actually has mastered the writing art. From the title, I assumed I would get something on the Gulf War, the Normandy invasion and the capture of Washington during the War of 1812. I would recommend this book as a good read as long as you go in knowing what you are getting.
December 5, 2025
The book is okay, just okay. It is partly travelogue and partly American history written by an Americanophile Englishman. The book focuses specifically on theaters in which the author personally visited from the Plains of Abraham to the Virginia Peninsula. The most interesting parts of the book are the author's views of America and the changes in culture he witnesses from his visits in the 1950's, 70's-90's. His love for America probably exceeds my own mild chauvinism.
On the negative side there are several typos and curious sentence structures throughout. For example, he calls General Daniel Morgan "David Morgan" (it is corrected later), and makes the claim that A. S. Johnston led the Confederate retreat from Shiloh (he died the day before). Also, the author's opinions and the facts blur often and somewhat inappropriately.
On the negative side there are several typos and curious sentence structures throughout. For example, he calls General Daniel Morgan "David Morgan" (it is corrected later), and makes the claim that A. S. Johnston led the Confederate retreat from Shiloh (he died the day before). Also, the author's opinions and the facts blur often and somewhat inappropriately.
May 4, 2020
A thorough examination of warfare throughout the history of the continent. Keegan provides a view of war through a cultural and geographic lens.
His love for America is plain and it was enjoyably comfortable to be welcomed into his world of nostalgia as he describes his road trips around the US during his youth.
The book is nothing if not thorough and there were times that it felt like a real slog to get through it. With that being said, I can’t fault a military historian for doing his job well.
His love for America is plain and it was enjoyably comfortable to be welcomed into his world of nostalgia as he describes his road trips around the US during his youth.
The book is nothing if not thorough and there were times that it felt like a real slog to get through it. With that being said, I can’t fault a military historian for doing his job well.
September 8, 2022
Good review of the major wars fought in the Americas, well-written and useful for brushing up on your history. At the same time, this is less a coherent work than a collection of extended essays tied together by a loose theme, and the early chapters are (by far) the best. The tai... [see the rest on my book review site.]
January 1, 2023
Disappointing in that the book is more a tale of the author’s relation to and visiting of various battlefields across the American continent, rather than the typical strategic analysis that one expects from Keegan. Entertaining, but not what was expected. You will learn some useful history in all that he relates, just do not expect in depth analysis.
November 24, 2023
Keegan generally does great work, though I think he may have delved too much out of his comfort zone in this undertaking.
There is only so much an Englishman can connive out in that great vastness of North America. Much of it was memories of travels though.
There is only so much an Englishman can connive out in that great vastness of North America. Much of it was memories of travels though.
January 16, 2020
another book that haunts me. I have mixed feelings about Prof. Keegan, but his description of battles superimposed on city street grids was incredibly powerful.
July 5, 2023
Equal parts review of battlefields in North America vs. an Englishman's thoughts about America from the late 1950s through 1980s
August 30, 2023
I really wanted to like Keegan. But alas.
December 19, 2023
Should have kept the British title: Warpaths-Travels of a Military Historian in North America. Much more fitting.
October 6, 2014
The late John Keegan's analysis of the "wars for North America", he covers the French and Indian War, the Revolution, the Civil War and the wars against the Plains Indians. I didn't learn a great deal from the chapters on the military activity, but I did enjoy his "One Englishman's America" chapter. In it he covers how he was exposed to Americans, from his parents' discussions of the U.S. prior to the U.S. entry into WW2 ("Yes, if were waiting for the Americans, but not a single word so I remember my parents reproaching them for the delay"), to his first sight of Americans as the military buildup began in England ("Yet they were entrancingly different. They spoke, as the girls they were al too keep to sweet-talk delightedly discovered, just like film stars. Some of them actually looked like film stars, GIs being generally taller than British soldiers-the superabundance of the American diet made for bigger frames-and bering the handsomeness brought by a mixture of immigrant genes") to his first tour of the US in 1957 as part of a "Rhodes scholarship in reverse", whereby certain Britain graduates could get to know the US. The chapter gave an interesting perspective of how the US was viewed by some Brits.
July 21, 2008
I love military history, and Keegan sits like a large, lumpy something-or-other in the midst of the field. He's probably the most-read guy out there that can boast his elite academic credentials, and he's written on every aspect of war in every historical period, but I'd personally really rather read something with some pizzaz. I've read his History of the First World War as well, and I have to say its pretty darn boring, if erudite. It seems like his editors asked him to punch it up a bit for Fields of Battle, his study of America's strategic geography. He does this by providing a long essay on his experiences bopping around the US as a young man (Keegan is English). This is by far the best part of the book. Another Goodreads reviewer compared it to Alexis de Toqueville, which had occured to me as well. For those non-grognards out there, the balance of the book is a bit of a yawn-fest, though it is clearly the work of a reliable expert.
June 23, 2009
This is a great read - even for those who are not usually readers of nonfiction or of books on historical topics. Keegan writes well for a lay audience and makes the narrative aspects of the historical events compelling to the modern reader. His introduction is worth reading all by itself because it is a wonderful piece of cultural commentary about the relationship between English travelers and the American continent. If you are a fan of Bill Bryson, you might like Keegan's introduction because it offers the reverse perspective on the Anglo-American cultural relationship found in Bryson's Notes for a Small Island.
July 18, 2013
The chapter on Little Bighorn was worth the entire book. I've never given much attention to that battle, because I find Custer unappealing and the Indian Wars depressing. But Keegan's writing on the battle was engrossing.
Overall, the book was very enjoyable, a sort of travelogue of Keegan's explorations of the North American countryside and the some of the key battles that shaped its destiny. (I was rather confused that his Civil War focus was on the Peninsular campaign, rather than Gettysburg.) Keegan is a wonderful writer on military history, but what was especially striking in this book is his eye for the geography of North America and how that geography played a role.
Overall, the book was very enjoyable, a sort of travelogue of Keegan's explorations of the North American countryside and the some of the key battles that shaped its destiny. (I was rather confused that his Civil War focus was on the Peninsular campaign, rather than Gettysburg.) Keegan is a wonderful writer on military history, but what was especially striking in this book is his eye for the geography of North America and how that geography played a role.
April 10, 2007
Shortly after I read this book, I heard an interview - Fresh Air or something - in which Keegan put forth the view that Native American culture in general benefitted greatly from the technologies colonialism brought to their shores. Going back over the book, I couldn't find anything that promoted this view, so I am left to assume that he omitted all his research proving such a surprising point when writing Fields of Battle for some reason. Why anyone would turn down the opportunity to prove such a breathtaking claim is beyond me!
December 2, 2024
Keegan is a pretty good writer and storyteller - most of the time. I found myself lost several times as he digresses into anecdotes about his travels in America. His narrative, when covering the subjects that his book is purportedly about, is enjoyable and readable, but his central premise of American forts as representations of American military history can get subsumed by his coverage of adjacent events. Otherwise, a pretty interesting history.
February 23, 2008
The author is a modern-day Alexander de Toqueville. He is an Englishman who has travelled all over North America, studying the different battlefields and also the American culture. He discusses how America's landscape has formed its wars and its attitudes. It is very informative because it is written by a very well-informed outsider. I really liked this book.
August 16, 2012
Interesting to read about North American history through the eyes of an Englishman. Typically Keegan, he crams the book with minute details. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy his exhaustive recollections of his American travels. A little bit of that goes a long way.
December 8, 2007
Most people do not know all this but this is why we are what we are and speak the language that we do today.
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October 15, 2008Wow..Just wow. Keegan is first in rank of military historians. The first chapter is a personal account of the United States. Quite touching and insightful.
August 27, 2009
Pretty scattered. It took me two tries to actually read it. it seems full of holes. It was awesome to see him right about the Civil War for more than a few sentences though.
January 13, 2013
Keegan gives his take on military history of several areas in Nort America.
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