J. F. C. Fuller Bücher

Although skill, leadership, strategy, and number of forces have been important factors in battles, armaments have played the most decisive role in determining ultimate military victory. Entranced by the power and precision of armaments, man has continuously invented faster, more accurate, and more devastating weapons, from the javelin, stone axe, sword, and the arrow to the cannon, musket, rifle, tank, super-fortress, and missile. In this study of the influence of armaments on history, J.F.C. Fuller shows how the inventive genius of man can potentially obliterate his sense of moral values and destroy civilization. Divided into armament epochs—Ages of Valour, Chivalry, Gunpowder, Steam, Oil, and Atomic Energy— Armament and History examines the most influential military innovations of each period as well as the key leaders (including Alexander, Caesar, Gustavus Adolphus, and Napoleon) who skillfully employed these weapons. Although the author acknowledges that war cannot be eliminated entirely, he urges man to impose restrictions on warfare before society descends into a second Dark Age. Completed immediately after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—chilling examples of mass destruction caused by armaments—this impassioned work remains relevant more than a half-century later.

At the age of 20, Alexander succeeded his father, Philip of Macedon, and fulfilled his father's plans for freeing the Greeks of Asia Minor from Persian rule. He invaded the Persian Empire with 30,000 infantry and 5000 calvalry and in a series of dazzling campaigns, which included the battles of Issus and Gaugamela, he defeated Darius and was proclaimed King of Asia. His plans to conquer India were resisted by his men, and death cut short the ambitions of one of the greatest soldiers the world has ever known. He was the model for successors as notable as Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte, and his campaigns are still studied in military academies throughout the world. Major-General Fuller's book looks at the military achievements of one of the world's greatest conquerers.