“Fields of Battle: The Wars for North America”, by John Keegan

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.

“Alexander the Great and His Time”, by Agnes Savill

324 pages, Dorset Press, ISBN13: 978-0880295918

Agnes Savill’s book, Alexander the Great and His Time, provides the reader with an in-depth review of Alexander’s most famous battles during his conquest of Asia while attempting also to justify its overly-favorable presentation of the life of this remarkably energetic and successful conqueror of the near east.

To do so, Savill relies heavily on W.W. Tarn, the British classical scholar and a writer, almost to the exclusion of so many other excellent scholars (i.e., Alexander the Great Vol. I, Narrative; Alexander the Great Vol. II, Sources and Studies, both circa 1948). Tarn, in turn, borrows heavily from Arrian (Lucius Flavius Arrianus), a brilliant Greek commander in the Roman army and a friend of the Emperor Hadrian. Arrian selected the writings of Aristobulus and Ptolemy as his primary sources for his own work on Alexander, choosing to exclude much of the negative writings on Alexander that surfaced shortly after his death (predominantly by his detractors, who had their own political motives for vilifying Alexander). Aristobulus and Ptolemy were both contemporaries of Alexander the Great, Ptolemy serving as a distinguished General in the Macedonian Army under Alexander, while Aristobulus may have been a military engineer or a civilian. Following Alexander's death in 323BC, Ptolemy ruled over Egypt (founding the Ptolemaic Dynasty which only ended with the death of Cleopatra) and eventually wrote his memoirs which depicted Alexander in a very favorable light. Neither Ptolemy’s nor Aristobulus’ accounts of Alexander have survived the ages, and Arrian’s Anabasis of Alexander is the only reason we know of these first-hand accounts of Alexander.

Savill’s work is rather romanticized, with the rare character flaws and errors of judgment that she does bother to mentioning being explained away with some mitigating explanation for Alexander’s behavior and why it was justified. The reader cannot be sure that he is getting a balanced view of Alexander’s life or if they are getting an idealized perspective; one almost gets the impression from Savill’s writing that Alexander was near perfect and could do no wrong. We are treated to a detailed history of Alexander’s remarkable achievements, his strengths and successes, but never get to really know him because we never see his more human side, the side with blemishes and imperfections.

Savill, however, is unapologetic in her view of mysticism. The author goes to great lengths to point out every instance of Alexander consulting the ancient mystics (who somehow always manage to accurately predict his future). There are no examples given of the mystics ever giving Alexander incorrect or even vague predictions. Savill does confess, later in the book, that she has a personal bias in favor of mysticism. That bias is acutely evident in this book.

In Savill’s view, everything Alexander the Great did IS great: all of the subjugated peoples were so lucky to have been bettered by his rule; all of his motives are unimpeachable; all aspects of his personality, abilities, and deeds are of heroic proportions. The author accepts every positive historical exaggeration and legend of his motives and exploits. All criticisms made in other chronicles (megalomania, greed, alcoholism, mental instability, even simple lapses of judgment) are summarily discarded.

“The Twelve Caesars”, by Michael Grant

282 pages, Charles Scribner’s Sons, ISBN-13: 978-0684144023

Conspiracy, suspicion, power, corruption, poison, conquests, marauders, murders, and yet more murders; such is the history of Roman Empire. Then again, there are copious examples from every nation’s history of such dastardly acts to grab power, from Egyptians Pharaohs, to French Bourbons, to Indian Moguls, to British royals, and so on and so forth. Human nature has changed very little in two thousand years. Now instead of murdering opponents, we vilify them to such an extent that populace loathes and discards them in the garbage bin. It is hard to imagine for us with two thousand years separation what we would do if we were given absolute power over everybody and everything.

While a fine communicator, Grant can be a challenging read, given his vocabulary usage; more troubling to this reader is the lack of footnotes and end notes only which complicates reading this work, specifically because some, but not all, quotes from ancient authors are unattributed in the text, as I suspect that most readers do not have the background in the Greek and Latin classics to easily identify the authors of these unattributed quotes. Also, a woefully-lacking suggested reading list of secondary materials is included.

The book opens with a splendid and extended essay on classical sources, biography, history and things Roman. It alerts the reader to many facts and interpretations that make the subsequent text far more intelligible. This opening, coupled with a short but deeply insightful conclusion, can be read with immense profit without ever even approaching the body of the work. However, this would be a grave mistake, as the twelve short biographies in chronological order provide a fascinating overview of the first 100-odd years of the Roman Empire as viewed from its center and through the personages of its rulers. Therein lays both the strength and weakness of the book. Others have devoted thousands of pages to materials Grant covers in limited and truncated form in a few hundred pages.

And within those twelve short biographies, I believe he accomplishes much. By Suetonius’s standards, Grant provides us with a sober and coherent explanation of the problems and challenges faced by those emperors. That overwork and fear of assassinations were debilitating to all that ruled long enough is made plain in these pages. The Senatorial nobility would sooner or later tire of any ruler and plot against him. And if overwork and sedition by the nobility in Rome were not enough, by the middle of the period under consideration, the Praetorian Guard would start installing emperors, and this would be followed by emperors installed by the provincial legions. In spite of the brevity of each portrait, many incisive judgments regarding each of these personalities are rendered convincingly by Grant. I find those judgments valuable to an overall understanding of the formative era of the Roman Empire. Within its limitations, this is a marvelous work that can be appreciated by those with a modest knowledge of the Roman world. Equally, there is much of interest here for the well-read in this area. A careful consideration of this work will reward the diligent reader with some remarkable insights on early Roman imperial rule.