Fields of battle : the wars for North America John Keegan

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Keegan, John, 1934-2012.

Standardized Title:

Warpaths

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

North America--History, Military.

North America.

Battles--North America--History.

Battles.

Keegan, John, 1934-2012--Travel--North America.

Keegan, John.

Physical Description:

xiii, 348 pages, [16] pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Edition:

1st American ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : A.A. Knopf : Distributed by Random House, 1996.

Summary:

In North America geography has shaped the course of military history as it has nowhere else in the world. Our vast interior spaces, huge mountain ranges, extensive river systems, and boundless prairies have determined each critical conflict for control of the continent. Guided by this central insight, the acclaimed military historian John Keegan takes us on a tour of every major fortification and scene of battle in North America, from the arrival of the Europeans in the sixteenth century to the final defeat of the native American population in the nineteenth. He shows how the unique character of the American terrain and climate, and the inevitable competition for the land's wealth of natural resources, dictated why men fortified where they did, campaigned as they did, and were drawn to those battlefields - Yorktown, Gettysburg, Bull Run, to mention only a few - whose names are now part of our mythology.

Drawing upon more than thirty years of experience researching and writing about warfare throughout recorded time, Keegan brings his unique understanding to bear on all the famed engagements of our military history, including Wolfe's victory over Montcalm at Quebec, the legendary battles of the Revolutionary War (as Keegan explains, Washington knew particularly well how to use space and distance), and, of course, the colossal campaigns of the Civil War. An important theme of this book concerns how the war-making assumptions of the Old World met conditions in the New, and so Keegan concludes his narrative with an apt twist: he recalls the arrival of troops from the United States and Canada to save his native Britain and liberate France from German domination during World War II.

Contents:

One Englishman's America

The forts of New France

The fort at Yorktown

Fortifying the Confederacy

Forts on the plains

Flying fortresses.

Notes:

Originally published: Warpaths. London : Hodder and Stoughton, 1995.

Includes index.

Other Format:

Online version: Keegan, John, 1934- Warpaths. Fields of battle.

ISBN:

067942413X

9780679424130

OCLC:

34666579

Online:

Publisher description