Great Military Disasters by Charles Messenger

Great Military Disasters (Illustrated 1991 Military History in Dust Jacket)

An Illustrated Survey of History's Most Notorious Military Defeats, from Cannae to the Twentieth Century

Bibliographic Specifications

• Title: Great Military Disasters
• Author: Charles Messenger
• Publisher: Bison Books Ltd, London
• Publication Date: 1991
• ISBN-13: 9780861248254
• ISBN-10: 0861248252
• Edition Details: First published in 1991. Illustrated edition.
• Binding: Publisher's black cloth boards with a pictorial blue dust jacket.
• Physical Format: Large illustrated quarto-size hardcover, approximately 300 x 235 mm, with colour illustrations, period paintings and photographs throughout.
• Language: English

Official Condition Report

• The Book: Very Good Plus (VG+)
• Exterior / Boards: The publisher's black cloth boards are clean and straight, with a few tiny light specks near the lower edge and a slightly bumped bottom corner at the spine. The spine is straight, and the blue spine with red and white lettering is clean and bright.
• Interior: The pages are clean and bright, with glossy colour illustrations. There is no foxing, marking or writing. The binding is tight, with gutter stitching visible in places.
• The Dust Jacket: Present and intact: a pictorial blue jacket with a painting of a cavalry charge on the front and a montage of battle scenes on the back. There is slight edge rubbing and small nicks at the lower corner and fore-edge. The jacket is protected in a durable archival-type plastic cover.

Synopsis & Historical Value

Great Military Disasters by Charles Messenger, published in London in 1991, is a lavishly illustrated survey of famous military defeats and catastrophes across history. It is arranged around individual battles and campaigns, from the ancient world, including Cannae and Zama, through to the Zulu victory at Isandlwana and conflicts of the twentieth century.

The text is accompanied by period paintings and photographs, which make this large-format volume as much a pleasure to browse as to read. It looks at how armies came to grief, and offers a useful comparative view of command, planning and circumstance across more than two thousand years of warfare.

For South African collectors, the inclusion of Isandlwana, the great Zulu victory over a British column in 1879, gives the book a link to Anglo-Zulu War interest. It is a handsome, collectible copy of a substantial military history, complete in its dust jacket.

Author Profile: Charles Messenger

Charles Messenger, born in 1941, was a military historian, defence analyst and author. He served for many years as an officer in the Royal Tank Regiment before becoming a full-time historian, and was credited with more than forty books.

His works include A Century of Warfare, written to accompany a television series, The Art of Blitzkrieg and The Commandos 1940-1946. He also wrote biographies of leading German commanders, among them Rundstedt, Rommel and Sepp Dietrich (Hitler's Gladiator).

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