Book Description

Focusing on the front-line soldiers who fought for their tribes, their cities, their overlords and their countries-from the Ancient Greeks who repelled the invading Persians in the 5th century to the US Marines in action in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, this visual history paints a compelling portrait of the front-line soldier through 2,500 years of history. The third in a series of illustrated military history books, following the highly successful Battle and Weapon, Warrior features vivid accounts of daily life, training, and tactics of the ordinary fighting man. There are also features on the kit they carried and the weapons they used, as well as the part they played in significant battles. In addition to celebrated soldiers of Europe and North America there are sections on equally formidable warriors from other parts of the world, such as the Mongol horsemen of the 13th century, the Aztecs, the Samurai of 17th-century Japan, New Zealand's Maori and the Zulus of South Africa. Warrior is organized into six sections, covering six distinct periods in the history of warfare: Phalanxes and Legions deals with the warfare of Ancient Greece and Rome; Conquest and Chivalry explores the age of warriors who fought for either honor or plunder; Pikemen and Musketeers charts the advent of gunpowder in the 16th century; Empires and Frontiers deals with expansion of empires and the clashes of colonization; Trenches and Dogfights looks at the mechanized warfare of World War I and II, when the development of tanks, aeroplanes and submarines as weapons of war marks the beginning of a completely new era; and Guerillas and Commandos shows that despite the proliferation of death-dealing machines the ordinary soldier still retains a role, sometimes highly specialized, such as helicopter-borne infantry, or guerrilla forces like the Vietcong, who managed to resist the most powerful army on earth.