User:Gautier lebon/The Art of War in the Western World
The magnum opus of one of America's most respected military historians, The Art of War in the Western World has earned its place as the standard work on how the three major operational components of war--tactics, logistics, and strategy--have evolved and changed over time. This monumental work encompasses 2,500 years of military history, from infantry combat in ancient Greece through the dissolution of the Roman Empire to the Thirty Years' War and from the Napoleonic campaigns through World War II, which Jones sees as the culmination of modern warfare, to the Israeli-Egyptian War of 1973.[1][2].
Jones distinguishes persisent versus raiding strategies, and proposes a 2 by 2 classification of weapons systems: relatively less mobile (infantry) versus relatively more mobile (cavalry and mechanized) and relatively light (unarmored or lightly armored) versus relatively heavy (heavily armored). According to this classification, a medieval knight would be heavy cavalry, just as would a modern tank. Modern aircraft are assimilated to light cavalry. He discusses how certain weapons systems dominate others: for example, light cavalry can threaten heavy infantry, whereas heavy infantry will overpower light infantry.
"This book displays Archer Jones's unparalleled mastery of tactical and operational military history over a broad chronological span."--Russell F. Weigley, author of History of the United States Army
"Archer Jones's work has no current competition as a broadly based military history for the general American reader. . . . Excellent reading."--Theodore Ropp, author of War in the Modern World
"No other similar work so thoroughly and objectively highlights the strategic, tactical and logistic continuities and changes that have animated war from the time of the ancient Greeks to the Yom Kippur War. No other work steps through the past twenty-five centuries with more impartiality... There has not been such a comprehensive and useful book in generations." -- Alan Gropman, Washington Post
"With keen insight and powerful prose, historian Archer Jones culminates a lifetime of study, reading, and writing about military history with this seminal work. With great clarity and precision, Jones examines 2,500 years of recorded conflict in the Western world, and extrapolates the operational techniques of tactics, logistics, and weapon systems that have provided a continuum through the years." -- Mike Fisher, Infantry
"A masterful 2,500-year overview of the operational aspects of land-based warfare in the West, with appeal for both fans of military history and general readers... An altogether splendid synthesis." -- Kirkus Reviews [3]