Reviews for Warriors : portraits from the battlefield
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
A highly popular British military historian ( Armageddon, 2004), Hastings selects memoirs and biographies about 15 combatants (one of them a woman) and distills accounts of their lives and trenchant observations about their personalities. He makes many striking contrasts between public renown and the private regard in which these figures were held; comrades, who were more realistic about the risk of war and anxious to survive it, tended to be wary of the recklessly courageous warrior. Possessed of the killer instinct vital in battle, most members of Hastings' gallery were also cautiously appreciated by higher command. Brains must supersede fearlessness for the intelligent conduct of war, an exigency of military organization Hastings works into all his portraits. These are uniformly fascinating and encompass a flamboyant aide-de-camp to Napoleon, a languidly egotistical officer of Victoria's household guard, the ascetic German captain of WWI's Emden, Britain's World War II Dambuster Guy Gibson, and America's own Audie Murphy. Filled with poignant psychological insight, Hastings' remarkable sketches will provoke greater-than-average demand from the military affairs readership. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2005 Booklist
Publishers Weekly
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When Hastings (Armageddon) writes of one Royal Army officer, "If he was not born fearless, he made himself so," he might easily be speaking about any of the 15 soldiers whose exploits he culls from the major battles of the last two centuries. Although the veteran British newspaperman shows some favoritism toward his countrymen, his combat pantheon is international in scope, including American war heroes Eddie Rickenbacker and Audie Murphy as well as Israeli Avigdor Kahalani, a tank commander during the Yom Kippur War. Hastings's attitude toward his subjects is respectful, but, especially as he draws closer to the present day, not worshipful. He writes with a keen sense of the limitations in wartime glory, often remarking upon the disappointments these men-and one woman-faced in peacetime, when their talents were no longer valued. (Nor does he have much love for modern technocrats in the Rumsfeld mode.) His sentences are impeccably polished, occasionally revealing a dry wit. "It was a measure of the limitations of nineteenth-century weapons," he observes when recounting the exploits of a soldier in Napoleon's army, "that any man could so often be injured by them, yet survive to fight again." Photos and maps. (Jan. 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
An old-fashioned book about battles past, before the technocrats came along to ruin the notion of courage under fire. Indeed, writes British military journalist and historian Hastings, "this study will be of no interest to such modern warlords as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, because it addresses aspects of conflict they do not comprehend, creatures of flesh and blood rather than systems of steel and electronics." What characterizes the flesh-and-blood creatures whom Hastings studies is a particular kind of gumption in the face of mortal danger. To some, such as the impossibly accomplished Napoleonic soldier Jean-Baptiste-Antoine-Marcellin de Marbot, courage seems second nature; he was apt to jump into freezing lakes to rescue wounded enemies, incur multiple wounds and save his beloved emperor, all in a day's work. To others, initiative under fire was as much an intellectual, learned process as a reflexive, physical one; Hastings offers an affecting portrait of Joshua Chamberlain, the Maine rhetorician who became one of the Union's most outstanding officers during the Civil War. To still others, courage was a nearly unwilling and certainly unexpected response; none of his fellow officers could have guessed that John Chard, the hero of Rorke's Drift, would have organized so brilliant and successful a defense. And to still others, bravery in grave danger seems almost a path to escape from an unhappy life under ordinary circumstances; its revisionism will perhaps displease diehard fans, but Hastings's portrait of the woeful Audie Murphy, "widely perceived as a soldier fighting a war of his own," is sensitive and revealing, and it explains much about the ways in which heroes allow logic and instinct to be overridden by something much more elemental—and dangerous. Warriors are like the rest of us, Hastings observes—which makes the accomplishments of the great ones all the more unusual. Of interest to students of tactics and military history—and perhaps of psychology as well. Copyright ŠKirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Hastings's last book, Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945, was well received by critics and the public alike. If his latest work seems to lack the academic weight of his previous venture, at least the two share a common theme-the courage of soldiers facing the carnage of war. Moving chronologically through battles of the 19th and 20th centuries, Hastings here dedicates a chapter each to an individual who demonstrated extraordinary heroism. The book is strongest when spotlighting an individual who has faded somewhat into the historical background, e.g., British Gen. Harry Smith or Israeli Lt. Col. Avigdor Kahalani. Conversely, chapters devoted to more famous "warriors" who have been the focus of other works seem oddly brief and sketchy, e.g., the coverage of Gen. James Gavin. Because it is purposefully lighter than Armageddon and based almost entirely on published sources, this book does not offer serious military historians much new information. Undoubtedly, though, many aspiring armchair generals will find this work inspiration for more in-depth study. Recommended for public libraries with active military history collections.-Brian K. DeLuca, Dover P.L., DE (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
