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The Decisive Battles of the Western World and Their Influence Upon History [in 2 Vols]: [480 B.C. - 1757] Paperback – December 28, 1972

by J. F. C. Fuller (Author), John Terraine (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 7 ratings
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  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    HarperCollins Publishers
  3. Publication date
    December 28, 1972
  4. ISBN-10
    0586080341
  5. ISBN-13
    978-0586080344
  6. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ HarperCollins Publishers; New Ed edition (December 28, 1972)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0586080341
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0586080344
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.4 ounces
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 7 ratings

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
7 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Robert E Schramm
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommend
Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2020
I bought this book in 1973 and read both volumes cover-to-cover. It ignited a love of military history in me. I had never cared much about history in general but I became fascinated by many of histories characters. I doubt many would be as taken with this book as I was but I highly recommend it. Still have it on my shelf.
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David W. Nicholas
4.0 out of 5 stars Fuller's view of the world of Warfare, shortened
Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2007
JFC Fuller was an eccentric, opinionated, iconoclastic British soldier and theorist who wrote extensively about warfare between his leaving the British army (basically at the end of the First World War) and his death in 1966. His writing generally fell into two categories: on the one hand he did history, and on the other, military theory. This current book was originally issued as a three volume study, and it is primarily history. It was at the time considered very influential, and it's generally aged well.

The current edition, under review, has been edited by British historian John Terraine. Terraine apparently decided to limit the books to European history in an attempt to shorten them and reduce their content to something manageable. I have to say that I think him only partially successful: the two volumes that emerge from the editing process are between them about 1100 pages in length. An edited version of anything should be shorter than that. To weave the text together, Terraine uses a strange technique whereby the text's chapters are hung together with "chronicles" and "editor's notes". The former are shortened versions of Fuller's writings, and the latter are written by Terraine to explain what Fuller said between the various chapters. The whole thing is rather confusing.

Fuller is, as I said above, very opinionated. Some of his opinions, especially as he gets closer to the events of the current day, look considerably less intelligent now than they did when they were written. Fuller was politically a conservative. He is rather open in his dislike for Stalin, and equates him with Hitler. I've had this discussion with other people: in my mind, the actual body count of people killed doesn't really matter (they're both mass murderers: you wind up saying one is less evil because he "only" slaughtered X million). Instead, the difference is one of method: Stalin tried to conquer the world by gradually subverting everyone else's government. Hitler was set on invading each country and installing a dictatorship forcefully. The world could, and did, survive Stalin without fighting an all-out war against the USSR. The world couldn't, and didn't, avoid fighting Hitler to the death. That makes Hitler worse, even if his death toll was inferior to Stalin's.

Fuller can't see this point of view, and thinks that the end of the war left half of Europe in Stalin's hands. It did, but of course that didn't last, and those countries are now independent, though some of them are not exactly free. Fuller has a sense of moral equivalency throughout this book which is, to say the least, a bit unsettling. Where it's not so bad in describing the Thirty Years War, it's more annoying when he gets to the chapters about Hitler and his crimes.

I generally enjoyed this book, but I'm not sure that the editing process was done in a fashion that makes a reasonable book. I would recommend this only for specialists, and those people probably wouldn't object to the three volume, unabridged version.
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