100 Turning Points in Military History: The Critical Decisions, Key Events, and Breakthrough Inventions and Discoveries That Shaped Warfare Around the World

Alan Axelrod

Aug 2019 · Rowman & Littlefield

About this ebook

The typical military history presents a chronicle of battles and wars and the commanders and troops who fought them. This book takes a different approach. It presents battles and wars and people aplenty, but they are not its ultimate subjects. This book is about the turning points that not only make military history dynamic but crucial to the story of humanity and civilization. This book is about the decisions, acts, innovations, errors, ideas, successes, and failures that shaped the evolution of military art and science—strategy, tactics, and technology—and, in doing so, shaped the course of world history.

Here are the 100 points—from the birth of warfare in the Battle of Megiddo, 1457 BC, to the ongoing evolution of military history on its newest battlefield, cyberspace—at which the path of the warrior decisively turned on its long journey to where we find ourselves today.

About the author

Alan Axelrod is the author of many books on leadership, history, and military history, including 100 Turning Points in American History (Lyons Press, 2019), Miracle at Belleau Wood (Lyons Press, 2018), The Battle of the Somme (Lyons Press, 2016), The Battle of Verdun (Lyons Press, 2016), and Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). He has taught at University of Iowa (Iowa City, IA), Lake Forest College (Lake Forest, IL), and Furman University (Greenville, SC) and was most recently a creative consultant and on-screen commentator for The Great War, on the PBS American Experience television series. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.