 "a work of history and personal travel" | 2008-04-28 |
| - Reviewed By hkatz120 |
In Fields of Battle, John Keegan writes about the major wars of North America and his own travels in the U.S. and Canada. Keegan's focus throughout is on landscape and geography - how the land has shaped the wars and influenced the location of forts and key battles and their outcomes. He also touches on how landscape is an essential element of national character and affects the way people think about time and space.
The first chapter is a personal history of Keegan's relationship with America, starting with the American GIs who arrived in England during WWII, when Keegan was a young boy. He recounts his first long journey through the U.S., and his many trips afterwards, which took him to numerous cities, towns, battle sites, military academies, and academic campuses. Even as he moves on in later chapters to describe the major conflicts in Quebec between the French and English colonial powers, or the American War of Independence, Civil War, Native American wars in the west, and the invention of the airplane, he inserts his own recollections and personal observations of these places. I liked this element of Fields of Battle - the modern traveler walking on or through centuries of history. He likes to point out modern highways and bridges for instance that were once routes for whole armies and to describe what has changed or remained the same in certain places. He's quite good at creating atmosphere for the battles he describes, though I wish he'd also included more maps in the book - maps of battle sites and fortifications in particular; his descriptions could benefit from detailed visuals.
Keegan is engaged and delighted with his subject matter. He conveys an understanding of war and a good grasp of the major military figures and their characters. Before reading this book I hadn't closely considered the connections between war and the details of landscape - particularly how certain sites kept cropping up as arenas of battle in a few wars decades or centuries apart, and why they did so. The book has given me a greater awareness of the history that exists in even the most ordinary or out of the way places.
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| "A Memoir of Cherished North American Travels" | 2007-05-04 |
| - Reviewed By User: A274RBONJ55DOH |
The reviews seem pretty evenly divided between those who enjoyed Keegan's personal narrative style in this work and those who abhor it; put me in the former catagory with the caveat that the reader should know what he's picking up. First off, Keegan's reputation as a military historian is second to none; he is responsible for humanizing military history. This book, however, is more memoir than history. It is not a new interpretation so much as it is the author's recollections of his travels throughout the battlefields of North America and his personal impressions of the continent. I disagree with the opinion that his stylistic departure diminishes the content of Keegan's work here. It adds a dimension of color, personality to straightforward battlefield history. Telling this story (or more accurately retelling it) could easily have been stodgy in the hands of a lesser writer. Keegan has never been hidebound, hence his great success. I believe the Publisher's Weekly critique to be too cynical, "banalities" seems excessively harsh.
To be fair, this book is replete with personal observations and many generalizations. Here are a few examples: "George Custer was not a nice man" and "Peace is bad for bravados like Custer." From the perspective of an outsider looking in, he states,"The Americans are truly free and equal people," and "the British can feel quite at home in Canada." These simplifications may be detrimental to the quality of the work, but as another observed, it is more difficult to analyze your history when you are immersed in it. It may be more revealing for a foreigner to expound on it, to uncover new interpretation. If nothing else, he is honest. He proudly proclaims his love for America- no phony objectivity here.
This is not a great book, but I enjoyed its reminiscential style. Keegan has a gift for engaging the non-historian in the dramatic struggles through military history. His final synthesis about America and its way of war is particularly insightful. |
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| "America from an America-phile" | 2006-10-05 |
| - Reviewed By stratiotes_doxha_theon |
| Few Americans could have written such a work. It is our great fortune as Americans to have Mr. Keegan to tell the story with such style and readability. It is a fascinating story of the wars that shaped the North American continent and the United States in particular. It also opens our eyes to how historical trends we might not have noticed oterhwise - such as the importance of fortifications in US expansion across the continent. Despite our belief and espousal of maneuver or mobile warfare, fortification has been a halmark of US military doctrine. Mr. Keegan brings out this paradox and helps us see our history in a different light. Mr. Keegan does not disappoint in this volume from the great expectations we might have from his other books. |
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 "don't forget your machete." | 2006-07-24 |
| - Reviewed By User: A1V0WDSXRNR8E9 |
| While the book is a very informative one, Keegan is apparently talented in the art of digression. He spends the fist sixty-four pages of his literary labor extolling the virtues of America and its inhabitants, and describing (to what end, I cannot tell) his innumerable vacations, trips, and adventures in and about North America. He also (for reasons similarly ambiguous) chooses to include in this preface, a roundabout, labyrinthine discourse on his personal thoughts and experiences to do with England and France in addition to his lengthy (but vaguely on topic) treatise on America. These commentaries are, unlike the rest of the book, absolutely unreadable, forgettable, and just bad. One must plod through them, all the time conscious of mounting apathy and distaste. Their relevance is very near nihility and their pith very near brimful. |
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 "Excellent, but not standard Keegan" | 2005-10-14 |
| - Reviewed By ysageev |
Readers who have never had the privilege and good fortune to read John Keegan's histories should probably start with other works by the author.
Fields of Battle covers notable conflicts on North American shores, beginning with the colonization of Canada by the French, and moving on to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and conflicts with the Indians.
What makes Fields of Battle special, however, is that it is a profoundly personal journey by the author across battlegrounds and historic locations throughout the United States. Keegan employs his extensive traveling and historical erudition to explore his own spiritual and cultural identity -- that of British historian in love with America. In bringing his own complex perspective as a "foreigner" to our shores, Keegan shows us what we didn't know about ourselves.
Keegan's account of conflicts with Native Americans is relatively uncharitable to them. Readers who are accustomed to simplistic, typically Leftist whitewashings of the often stark brutality and recalcitrance of Indian tribes will find this history distinctly unpalatable. To his credit, Keegan does not shy away from describing American mistakes, but holds the perspective that there always was, is, and should be room in North America for both populations.
Finally, to readers insufficiently acquainted with the author's other writing to give him the respect he merits, Fields of Battle may come off as excessively sentimental and wistful. For those not in that group, Fields of Battle is yet another history by the preeminent John Keegan to savor and add to your book case. |
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