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Sign up todayHow Great Generals Win
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Learn moreThroughout history, great generals have done what their enemies have least expected. Instead of direct, predictable attack, they have deceived, encircled, outflanked, out-thought, and overcome often superior armies commanded by conventional thinkers.
Collected here are the stories of the most successful commanders of all time, among them Hannibal, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stonewall Jackson, Sherman, Rommel, and Mao Zedong. Each demonstrated the strategic and tactical genius essential for victory—a virtue that, ironically, does not come naturally to military organizations. More often than not, the straight-ahead, narrow-thinking soldier will be promoted over his more lateral-minded, devious counterpart. Yet when the latter gains control, the results may be spectacular.
Bevin Alexander is the author of seven books of military history, including How Hitler Could Have Won World War II and Lost Victories, which was named by the Civil War Book Review as one of the seventeen books that have most transformed Civil War scholarship. He was an advisor to the Rand Corporation for a study on future warfare and was a participant in a war-game simulation run by the Training and Doctrine Command of the US Army. His battle studies of the Korean War, written during his decorated service as a combat historian, are stored in the National Archives in Washington, DC. He lives in Bremo Bluff, Virginia.
Reviews
“This study is essential reading for students of military strategy and tactics.”
“For lifelong armchair warriors.”
“An astute military historian’s mildly contrarian appraisal of what separates the sheep from the wolves in the great game of war…Informed opinions on the martial arts that draw provocative distinctions between victors and winners.”
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