Reference Reviews

Reference for Students

Battlefield: Decisive Conflicts in History. Edited by Richard Holmes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 376 p. $30.00. ISBN 0-19-280653-X ISBN-13: 978-0-19-280653-6.

The 300 battles presented in this begin with Ancient Egypt and end with the Gulf War. Chapters are divided into “The Ancient World,” “Medieval Europe,” “The Renaissance to the French Revolution,” “Nineteenth-Century Europe,” “World War I” and “World War II.” The chapter on “The Americas” includes wars in the U.S. but also the Falklands War. “Asia and the Middle East” details The Vietnam War, and the First and Second Gulf Wars. Finally, “Africa” includes the French conquest of Algeria, the Zulu War, and the Boer Wars. The author has a particularly distinguished background in the United Kingdom and has presented seven BBC2 television series on war. The print is very small, and students who are interested in the topic may need to be encouraged to use the information. Some black and white drawings and maps illustrate the text. This is one of those volumes that will be difficult to decide if it is reference or belongs on the circulating shelves.