Product Description

A monumental, groundbreaking work of history that shows how technological and strategic revolutions have transformed the battlefield—from the Spanish Armada to the War on Terror— and how mastery of these innovations has shaped the rise and fall of nations and empires

In War Made New, acclaimed author Max Boot explores how innovations in warfare mark crucial turning points in modern history, influencing events well beyond the realm of combat. Combining gripping narrative history with wide-ranging analysis, Boot focuses on four “revolutions” in military affairs and describes key battles from each period to explain how inventions ranging from gunpowder to GPS-guided air-strikes have remade the field of battle— and shaped the rise and fall of empires.

Bringing to life battles from the defeat of the Spanish Armada to Wellington’s victory at Assaye, War Made New analyzes the Gunpowder Revolution and explains warfare’s evolution from ritualistic, drawn-out engagements to much deadlier events, precipitating the rise of the modern nation state. He next explores the triumph of steel and steam during the Industrial Revolution, including the British triumph at Omdurman and the climax of the Russo-Japanese war at Tsushima, showing how it powered the spread of European colonial empires. Moving into the twentieth century and the Second Industrial Revolution, Boot examines three critical clashes of World War II—the German army’s blitzkrieg, Pearl Harbor, and the firebombing of Tokyo—to illustrate how new technology such as the tank, radio, and airplane ushered in terrifying new forms of warfare that aided the rise of highly centralized, and even totalitarian, world powers. Finally, in his section on the Information Revolution, Boot focuses on the Gulf War, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iraq war, arguing that even as cutting-edge technologies such as stealth aircraft have made America the greatest military power in world history, advanced communications systems have allowed decentralized, “irregular” forces to become an increasingly significant threat to Western power. BACKCOVER: Advance Praise for War Made New
“Max Boot traces the impact of military revolutions on the course of politics and history over the past 500 years. In doing so, he shows that changes in military technology are limited not to warfighting alone, but play a decisive role in shaping our world. Sweeping and erudite, while entirely accessible to the lay reader, this work is key for anyone interested in where military revolutions have taken us—and where they might lead in the future.”
—U.S. Senator John McCain

“While much has been in written in recent years about the so-called ‘Revolution in Military Affairs,’ Max Boot is the first scholar to place it within the broad sweep of history, and in the context of the rise of the West in world affairs since 1500. In so doing, he not only tells a remarkable tale, but he compels us all, even those obsessed solely with contemporary military affairs, to ask the right questions and to distinguish what is truly new and revolutionary from what is merely ephemeral. He has rendered a valuable service, and given us a fascinating read at the same time, so we are doubly in his debt.”
—Paul Kennedy, Professor of History at Yale University and author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

“War Made New is impressive in scope. What is equally impressive is its unique interpretation of the causal relationship between technology, warfare and the contemporary social milieu. This is a superb thinking person's book which scrutinizes conventional historical wisdom through a new lens.”
—Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, USMC (ret.), co-author of Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

“Max Boot's book takes hundred of years of tactical battle history and reduces it to an incisive narrative of how war has changed. By providing such a coherent view of the past, he has pointed us toward the future. What is doubly impressive is how he draws surprising, fresh lessons from wars we thought we knew so much about but in fact didn't.”
—Robert D. Kaplan, author of Imperial Grunts

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #145875 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 640 pages

From Publishers Weekly
From bronze cannons to smart bombs, this engaging study examines the impact of new weaponry on war by spotlighting exemplary battles, including famous epics like the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the attack on Pearl Harbor along with obscure clashes like the 1898 Battle of Omdurman, in which a British colonial force mowed down Sudanese tribesmen with machine guns. Boot (The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power) gives due weight to social context: advanced weapons don't spell victory unless accompanied by good training and leadership; innovative doctrine; an efficient, well-funded bureaucracy; and a "battle culture of forbearance" that eschews warrior ferocity in favor of a soldierly ethos of disciplined stoicism under fire. These factors flourish, he contends, under a rationalist, progressive Western mindset. The author, a journalist and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, enlivens his war stories with profiles of generals from Gustavus Adolphus to Norman Schwarzkopf and splashes of blood and guts. Boot distills 500 years of military history into a well-paced, insightful narrative. (Oct.)
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Lt. Gen. Bernard E. Trainor, USMC (ret.), coauthor of Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
War Made New is impressive in scope. What is equally impressive is its unique interpretation of the causal relationship between technology, warfare and the contemporary social milieu. This is a superb thinking-person's book, which scrutinizes conventional historical wisdom through a new lens.

Robert D. Kaplan, author of Imperial Grunts
Max Boot's book takes hundred of years of tactical battle history and reduces it to an incisive narrative of how war has changed. By providing such a coherent view of the past, he has pointed us toward the future. What is doubly impressive is how he draws surprising, fresh lessons from wars we thought we knew so much about but in fact didn't.

Customer Reviews

Well-written but superficial
Max Boot's massive study of the evolution of military technology and its impact upon military history in the last four centuries is very well-written but ultimately fails as history. It fails for the simple reason that the author is closely associated with the "neo-conservative" point of view that has had such a disastrous impact on American foreign policy during the last eight years. Let us be clear here, I do not criticize the book because I am part of that massive army of critics of the Irag War and occupation, I do so because history should be an exercise in objectivity. Boot's analysis all too often is a superficial restatement (without the necessary references) of the work of earlier writers like Theodore Ropp, Martin van Creveld, Hans Delbrueck as other reviewers have rightly pointed out. This book reads like a well-written dissertation by a bright, but ideologically conservative graduate student. It has all the attractions and shortcomings of popular history: sweeping generalizations, questionable analogies, and superficial analysis that tends to ignore the larger context of the question. As a professor who has taught military history on the university level for over twenty years, I would not recommend this book to my students. My recommendation for anyone looking for a one volume survey of war from the 16th century to the Cold War would be Theodore Ropp's wonderful War in the Modern World. For readers interested in reading superior military history written from a more sophisticated "neo-con" perspective, I would recommend anything by Victor Davis Hanson.

A Great Introduction to Military History
After taking a foreign policy class, I realized that my knowledge of military history is woefully lacking. While this book is not designed to be an introduction to military history, Boot is a lucid writer who avoids confusing jargon, which made the book an excellent primer for me.

For me, the best part about War Made New was that it managed to explain why military victories have such a great effect on world history. In most history classes I've ever taken, victories are explained by looking at economics and cultures. However, these arguements do a poor job explaining why, for example, France and Britain fell to the Nazis in 1940. Boot's explaination (that Germany, while poorer and weaker had a better military organization) was much more satisfying. Boot manages to work similar miracles with his explanation of the Spanish Armada and the Russo-Japanese War.

Boot's coverage of modern military history is certainly more controversial, but as a novice, I found it extremly interesting - Boot explained, in laymens terms, why it is that America has the best military in the world. Indeed, after reading Boot's book, I was so fascinated by the administrative set-up of the US Military, that I started telling my Syrian roommate about what components of military administration our college should adapt. Needless to say, she was not impressed...

Most of these postings seem to have been made by connoisseurs of military strategy and technique - but as a novice, I found this book extremely enlightening.

Almost a Wonderful Narrative History
This book provides a clear narrative of the role technology has played in warfare over the past 500 years through twelve or so case studies. Although it contains a fair amount of detail, such as how the Prussian needle gun worked, it is incredibly easy to read. These considerations alone make me happy to recommend the book to anyone interested in military history regardless of their familiarity with the subject.

That said, I feel required to offer a warning to those who would pick up this book: Boot does not give an entirely fair analysis of the case studies from 1944 to the present. In the respective chapters (about one quarter of the book), Boot overemphasizes the role the United States played in creating and implementing new technologies in warfare, fails to give adequate credit to the tactics and technologies that opponents of the United States' created and implemented (such as the use of IEDs in Iraq), and legitimizes recent and current American foreign policy through narratives of the United States' military victories and the development of its advanced weapons - a case he does not make for any of the other countries and powers that comprise the first 450 years of his history. These biases are inconsistent with the general flow of the book and serve only as arguments for Boot's views, namely that "might makes right" and American preponderance is justified and good regardless of how it is used.

I recall the first example of this arising in a case study about the long range bomber: the tale of the B-29 and the firebombing of Tokyo. Boot argues that this weapon was revolutionary throughout WWII for strategic and terror bombing, yet most of the examples he gives occurred before the 1944 deployment of the bomber and are from the European theater rather than the Pacific - where the B-29 was deployed. Boot eventually described the role the B-29 played in firebombing Tokyo; however, he fails to mention the bomber was not revolutionary in this respect because firebombing was a tactic used in Europe as well as the Pacific and by bombers other than the B-29. In addition to this, the long range bomber could not have significantly impacted what he terms the "second industrial revolution" (1917-1945) because it was deployed so late in the war.

I have concluded the reason Boot chose to include such a ridiculous argument was to counter the preceding chapter concerning the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The firebombing case study served only to show we hit the Japanese harder than they hit us and that they had it coming. Such a message was entirely out of place in a book about changes in warfare and military technology. Boot should have presented the argument in a way that would not have compromised a truly excellent text, such as by writing it in another book.

Even with these flaws, War Made New is a fun and engaging read all things considered. I would recommend it to those interested in military history, unless they are not interested in poorly formed neoconservative arguments. Then I would only recommend the first three quarters.