"Describes the history of war, featuring little-known facts and bizarre inside information"--Provided by publisher.

From the Publisher: The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare provides a unique account of Western warfare from antiquity to the present, The book treats all aspects of the subject from the Greeks to the nuclear age: the development of warfare on land, sea and air; weapons and technology; strategy and defense; discipline and intelligence. Throughout, there is an emphasis on the socio-economic aspects of war: who pays for it, how can its returns...

In this succinct history of a conflict that raged for over a century, Gordon Corrigan reveals the horrors of battle and the machinations of power that have shaped a millennium of Anglo-French relationships.

The episode begins with the presidential election of 1864 that sets Abraham Lincoln against his old commanding general, George McClellan. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of the Union itself: with Grant and Sherman stalled at Petersburg and Atlanta, opinion in the North has turned strongly against the war. But 11th-hour victories at Mobile Bay, Atlanta, and the Shenandoah Valley tilt the election to Lincoln and the Confederacy’s last...

The nightmarish Union disaster at Fredericksburg comes to two climaxes that spring: at Chancellorsville in May, where Lee wins his most brilliant victory but loses Stonewall Jackson; and at Vicksburg, where Grant’s attempts to take the city by siege are stopped. During the episode we learn of fierce Northern opposition to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the miseries of regimental life and the increasing desperation of the Confederate homefront....

Episode six begins with a biographical comparison of Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee and then chronicles the extraordinary series of battles that pitted the two generals against each other from the wilderness to Petersburg in Virginia. In 30 days, the two armies lose more men than both sides have lost in three years of war. With Grant and Lee finally deadlocked at Petersburg, we visit the ghastly hospitals north and south and follow General Sherman’s...

The episode begins with William Tecumseh Sherman’s brilliant march to the sea, which brings the war to the heart of Georgia and the Carolinas and spells the end of the Confederacy. In March, following Lincoln’s second inauguration, first Petersburg and then Richmond finally fall to Grant’s army. Lee’s tattered Army of Northern Virginia flees westward towards a tiny crossroads town called Appomattox Court House. There the dramatic and deeply...

This episode charts the dramatic events that led to Lincoln’s decision to set the slaves free. Convinced by July 1862 that emancipation was now morally and militarily crucial to the future of the Union, Lincoln must wait for a victory to issue his proclamation. But as the year wears on there are no Union victories to be had, thanks to the brilliance of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. The episode comes to a climax in September 1862 with Lee’s...