Joy Herron

This is clearly an authoritative and exhaustive tome, reviews of which inspired me to read it. To be honest, I do not know enough to discern biases if any, but he certainly does not romanticise the character of any leader, military or political, nor shy away from incisive criticism of most. It is almost completely a militaristic history with names, numbers and specifics, and thus a bit old-fashioned for its time. However, despite diligence in relaying such an account, it does not provide tools for the intelligent but novice reader to make the most of that approach. Battalions etc of both sides and named in rapid succession, but no reminder of which side they belong to, although not always obvious or easily discerned from the context. Personally I think it’s second worst failing is the paucity of maps, and what there are, are too small. The worst, and to my mind incomprehensible, failing is that no maps have legends. I do not know if they use time-honoured symbols for military groupings, but a work of this size must not rely on assumed knowledge to benefit from key features.