Military Power : Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle
Editorial Reviews
Review
Spencer D. Bakich Virginia Quarterly Review : Stephen Biddle has written perhaps the best volume on the causes of battlefield victory and defeat in a generation.
Choice : A major achievement. . . . [Biddle] combines a sophisticated formal model with analysis of critical case studies of actual battles.
Ted Hopf International History Review : "[This book] simultaneously makes major contributions in political science, military history, social science methodology, and contemporary policy debates.
Richard L. Kugler Perspectives on Politics : A worthy book on the never-ending debate over why land wars are won and lost . . . well worth reading, owning, and remembering.
Review
Richard K. Betts, Columbia University, author of "Military Readiness" : Stephen Biddle's Military Power is one of the most important contributions to strategic studies in recent decades. Presenting a very powerful case for a very surprising argument on a very important question, it will be controversial in some quarters, but critics will be hard-pressed to refute the case.
Lynn Eden, Stanford University, author of "Whole World on Fire" : Fascinating, precisely written, indeed, brilliant, Military Power is among the most important books ever published on modern warfare. Stephen Biddle fundamentally rethinks the causes of victory and defeat in modern war and challenges almost the entire corpus of scholarship on assessing force capability and the role of offense and defense in determining war outcomes. Presenting his argument with power, balance, and subtlety, he synthesizes many partial historical explanations and provides a basis for understanding why so many 'rules of thumb' and other explanations are misleading. A landmark work.
Michael O'Hanlon, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution : Steve Biddle may be the best American defense analyst of his generation, and this book is quite possibly his career masterpiece to date. Few are as well qualified as Biddle to weave together vivid descriptions of the modern battlefield, clear explanations of historical lessons, a detailed understanding of defense technology, and a sophisticated use of military models and war games. Biddle does all these things, helping the reader understand modern warfare more than does any other book on the market. His argument about trends in warfare transcends the popular theory that a revolution in military affairs is now underway. He replaces this theory with a more convincing, more historical, and less technology-obsessed view of the modern battlefield.
Military Power : Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle
Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle,Stephen Biddle,Princeton University Press,0691116458,Defensive (Military science),Deployment (Strategy),History,History - Military / War,International Relations - Arms Control,Military - General,Military - Strategy,Military Science,Military art and science,Offensive (Military science),Political Freedom & Security - International Secur,Political Science,Politics/International Relations,Political Science / General,Political Science and International Relations,Theory of warfare & military science
Books Report:
Recommended Books