348 pages, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., ISBN13:
978-0679424130
In
Fields
of Battle: The Wars for North America,
John Keegan covers notable conflicts on North American shores, interspersing his
narrative with tales of his own travels in the U.S. and Canada. Keegan’s focus
throughout is on landscape and geography: how the land has shaped the wars and
influenced the location of forts and key battles and their outcomes. He also
touches on how landscape is an essential element of national character and
affects the way people think about time and space.
The
first chapter is a personal history of Keegan’s relationship with America,
starting with the American GIs who arrived in England during WWII, when Keegan
was a young boy. He recounts his first long journey through the U.S., and his
many trips afterwards, which took him to numerous cities, towns, battle sites,
military academies, and academic campuses. Even as he moves on in later
chapters to describe the major conflicts in Quebec between the French and
English colonial powers, or the American War of Independence, Civil War, Native
American wars in the west, and the invention of the airplane, he inserts his
own recollections and personal observations of these places. I rather liked
this element of Fields of Battle –
the modern traveler walking on or through centuries of history. He likes to
point out modern highways and bridges for instance that were once routes for
whole armies and to describe what has changed or remained the same in certain
places. He’s quite good at creating atmosphere for the battles he describes,
though I wish he'd also included more maps in the book of the battle sites and
fortifications in particular; his descriptions could benefit from detailed
visuals.
Keegan
is engaged and delighted with his subject matter. He conveys an understanding
of war and a good grasp of the major military figures and their characters.
Before reading this book I hadn't closely considered the connections between
war and the details of landscape – particularly how certain sites kept cropping
up as arenas of battle in a few wars decades or centuries apart, and why they
did so. The book has given me a greater awareness of the history that exists in
even the most ordinary or out of the way places.
A
great book for anyone who enjoys reading about historical perspectives and
interpretations, but not too much on the tactics. The title might lead you to
think the book is all about the X’s and O’s and troop movements that took place
in the US and Canada over the last 300 years, but really it is about linking
key battles together and how they relate to the geography of the country. It’s can
be rather puzzling, trying to figure out why certain battles take place where
they do, and the author uses his knowledge of geography and to explain
precisely why. For instance, he explains what brought about the battle of
Yorktown in the Revolutionary War and then connects it to why the same exact
land was fought over in the Civil War. In another chapter, the author gives a
build-up to the Battle at Little Big Horn and the death of Custer without
tracing over every single step of the process. Instead, he tells it as a story,
as one would experience walking over the battlefield as it sits today. Few
Americans could have written such a work and so it is our great fortune as
Americans to have Mr. Keegan to tell the story with such style and readability.
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