I found this book in a charity shop, snapped it up, and read it straight away.
I cannot say that I learned much new about the developing military technology and its corresponding application. However, I found that the strength of the book was in how Stephen Turnbull took me, as the reader, across Europe and through time to narrate examples of the evolving art of warfare.
From the fall of Constantinople, to the conquest of Granada, past the Italian Wars, through the lowlands, onto Poland and to the Balkans, Turnbull writes of the changes in action.
The campaigns and individuals are dealt with in a clear fashion without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail. The biographies of the Chevalier Bayard, de Monluc, de la Noue and Captain John Smith (yes! He of Pocahontas legend) left me waiting to know more... especially about John Smith and his time fighting the Ottoman Turks.
The book has opened up to me an awareness of previously little known conflicts. If I was made of weaker stuff (thinking of some of my fellow Rejects!!!) I might now be consider a new wargaming project.
Turnbull has not written a great, in-depth tome. Nor do I believe that was his intention. This is perhaps more of a survey over space and time. And, for me, he has done a great job
Thoroughly enjoyable.
I never knew that John Smith fought the Turks. That was something the Pocahontas movie didn't cover. Looks like and interesting book covering a lot of ground.
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