Book Review: The allure of battle: A history of how wars have been won and lost

• Author: Robert Mandel
• Published date: 01 October 2018
• Date: 01 October 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17727071
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Nolan, C. (2017). The allure of battle: A history of how wars have been won and lost. New York,

NY: Oxford University Press. 664 pp. $29.69 (hardcover), ISBN 9780195383782.

Reviewed by: Robert Mandel, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, OR, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X17727071

For those interested in war battles, this hefty book holds considerable allure. The

work’s focus is on “the biggest wars among the major powers” (p. 9), with a noted

tilt toward modern European military history in the last few centuries, and it pro-

vides some interesting commentary in a comparative context about offensive and

defensive realities. A key overarching theme is that “with few exceptions, the major

power wars of the past several centuries were in the end decided by grinding

exhaustion than by the operational art o f even the greatest of the modern great

captains” (pp. 9, 10). The author’s vast expertise on the history of war battles is

evident throughout, and the work astutely chronicles the overoptimism of many

military leaders in believing that they overcome past problems in “the next war”

(p. 16). Moreover, the writing style decidedly readable and often eloquent,

augmented by very useful maps and photographs.

The author’s attempts are highly commendable in showing that warfare is not

generally characterized by the glory and brilliance of decisive battle, debunking the

widespread belief that “when world history turned it did so on a few days or hours of

intense violence, in major battles waged and won by great captains of special

courage and genius” (p. 18). However, to characterize as this book does most such

encounters as wars of attrition—“exhau stion of morale and materiel rather than

finality through battles marks the endgame ...of most wars” (p. 3)—is a bit of a

stretch and indeed seems to be swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite

direction. In other words, perhaps the author is right that too few military historians

recognize that “valor in modern warfare was seldom determinative” (p. 178), but

that does not justify jumping to the conclusion that attrition instead played a uni-

versally dominant role. The notion of “exhaustion” is not precisely defined, and the

testing of the central hypothesis is accomplished more through anecdotes than

through rigorous deductive logic or tight inductive analysis of evidence.

Nolan’s work thoughtfully does reject many sweeping claims, such as “war

doesn’t solve anything,” arguing passionately that across time “war in history has

Armed Forces & Society

2018, Vol. 44(4) 758-761

ªThe Author(s) 2017

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