Robert B. Asprey - War in the Shadows : The Guerrilla in History
EXHAUSTIVELY RESEARCHED, brilliantly constructed, informatively and briskly written, WAR IN THE SHADOWS is one of the most extensive works on guerrilla warfare ever published. From the charioteers of the Emperor Darius to the jungle-wise Viet Cong, the author has compiled and deftly analyzed the social, political and military factors that give rise to, sustain, and control guerrilla operations as they have been carried out through the ages.
The reader will be totally absorbed by the fast-paced narrative as Robert Asprey, author of Semper Fidelis, presents us with lucid, delving insights into :
The careers of guerrilla leaders: Villa and Zapata... Che Guevara... Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox" of the American Revolution... Hannibal... T. E. Lawrence... General Giap of Viet Nam... Jomo Kenyatta.
Guerrilla leaders and forces that actually toppled empires and wrested control of nations: Fidel Castro... the Irish Republican Army... the Viet Minh... Mao and Ho Chi Minh... the Mau Mau... the Bolsheviks... Attila and the Huns... Tito.
Conventional leaders who adapted certain guerrilla tactics and worked successfully with guerrilla units: Alexander the Great... Caesar... George Washington... Robert E. Lee... Frederick the Great... Lord Kitchener... the Duke of Wellington.
Famous insurrections and uprisings: the Sepoy Mutiny in India... the Boxer Rebellion... the Philippine Insurrection... the Mexican Revolution... the Cyprus revolt... the Boer Wars... the Crusades... uprisings in modern Africa.
The theory of guerrilla warfare is examined in Volume I as Asprey quotes extensively from such military historians and tacticians as Jomini, Machiavelli, Clause-witz and Liddell Hart. He personally explores the use and effects of terror, adapting to terrain, controlling civilian populations and the paradox of terrorist activities; and he gives insights into many guerrilla and quasi-guerrilla bands only touched on in all but the most specific histories: the Vikings... the Japanese infantry of World War II... the Palestinians... the French OAS in Algeria... the Sinn Fein in Ireland ... the OSS... the American Indian tribes.
Volume II of this impressive work focuses on Indochina and Viet Nam, giving one of the most comprehensive, far-reaching studies of that turbulent land and its wars yet published. Read of the Vietminh and the famed battle of Dien Bien Phu... American intervention... ARVN tactics ...the roles of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon... Viet Cong setbacks ...the air war... the Tet offensive... the role of the CIA... the facts behind American withdrawal.
An unprecedented work of monumental proportions, WAR IN THE SHADOWS, highlighted by 63 maps, an extensive bibliography and the author's brisk narrative style, is a giant two-volume reference source for every military and history buff. It is a history you will turn to again and again, for its own intrinsic value and as a supplementary guide to almost every volume on your history bookshelf.
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