An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present

Worth your time. A relatively quick read with some broad lessons without being preachy. The only thing I did not like was the lack of detailed depth, but then again, this book was not set up to be like that.

Got this as a gift for a relative. Thumbed through it and ended up reading a good chunk of it before I had to gift it. If you want to know more about asymmetric warfare throughout history, this is it.

Would recommend.

Very well researched, informative, and highly interesting. Mr. Boot pretty much managed to avoid the biases that stem from his leadership role on the Council on Foreign Relations, a neo-liberal think tank. But some of those biases do get through. In spite of that the reader will become acquainted with some pretty spectacular characters through the ages.

While I learned some things about the phenomenon of guerrilla warfare, I found his summaries of each of the events he describes a bit superficial, though I don't disagree with the general picture they add up to.

The most compelling history of insurgent warefare that I have ever read!
Full of teaching lessons for the future if anybody who reads this book will have the brains to utilize them, (e.g. Vietnam).
I would like for anybody who reads this book explain to me afterwards that they can ever again imagine vast armies of thousands of men ever pouring out of the trenches to attack a similar foe.

Boot makes extensive use of historical examples, extensive notes, and an intense bibliography and index reference for the reader. I highly recommend this book as a reference for any student of warfare, guerilla tactics, and insurgency successes and failures.

Very well presented in an organized fashion that makes sense. A great resource for anyone interested in Military History and especially those interested in Guerrilla Warfare.

This is an excellent companion for anyone's library collection of truly worthwhile reading on the art of war.

A little bit light, but not the less an extensive work. I was concerned regarding a possible ideological gloss reflecting the recent and current USA adventures (to use a 19 c term) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In "Invisible Armies," Max Boot has created a rare book that is a genuine public service. Illuminating the whole sweep of the history of guerrilla warfare, beginning from the clashes of pre-state bands up through the battles of the present day, Boot presents a convincing case that non-conventional warfare has been a historic norm and he identifies fairly clear lines that demarcate the difference between successful and unsuccessful insurgency and counter-insurgency efforts.

For a number of reasons, this is an area of warfare that has been consistently neglected by both the professional military and by historians in general. It's hard to conclude that there is any reason for this beyond the fact that counter-insurgencies tend to be brutal, dirty, and unglamorous affairs that produce few highly-feted heroes. I certainly found it worth my time and I think that it's fair to say that, even as someone who has written several books drawing upon my knowledge of military affairs, that this work was sufficiently well-researched and clearly-argued enough in order to be an influence upon my thinking.

It's a long book, but I think that it's definitely worth the time of anyone who wants to be able to speak intelligently about the issues that it discusses.

First the not so good; unlike other kindle books I've read, did not allow for automatic skipping to the footnotes. The cursor jumped right over the footnotes. This meant that I had to go to the Table of Contents and then the footnotes...very inconvenient. The book itself is well written and organized by type of guerrilla or terrorist event. Recommended for those wanting a better understanding of these types of engagements. Hope the glitch in the Kindle version is fixed.

Great book. This book covers a long history of insurgent/guerilla armies and thoroughly explains what makes them succeed or fail against conventional armies. Additionally, it covers the flip side of the coin in how conventional armies succeed or fail against insurgents.

An exhaustive look at the role of irregular warfare throughout history. Max Boot spans the globe to examine up close small wars, guerrilla actions, revolutions, uprisings and practically anytime else people have fought in ways other than armies on a field of battle.

Can't say I've ever found a book this readable on military history. A collection of brief vignettes that reveals the personalities and accidents that have shaped the arc of history. Tremendous read, you won't be able to put it down.

Well researched and very insightful. Too bad the GO/FOs won't read it much. There are some seniors who get it but most are as clueless as Rumsfeld. We keep losing wars and losing ground and while White House politics do play a role, the military does such a crap job of planning and conceptualizing and understanding the world, the region, and the enemy at the strategic level we are pissing away great soldiers on operations planned to win BUT only if the bad guys, the pertinent regional population, and the rest of the world go along with out strategic plan. What?! The enemy is not cooperating!? Whoda thunk! So much better than the tripe by people like Sommers who are still certain VietNam was lost due to the President.

This is a superb history of guerrilla warfare, insurgency and counter-insurgency from ancient times to the present date. What struck me in retrospect is that guerrilla warfare is being conducted in America today, to subtly (sometimes not so subtly) remold this great nation from its solid roots of liberty and freedom into some version of a European socialist state.

The wars of our world. Its like repeating them until we get it right. The tactics have changed down through the centuries but the outcome is usually unintended. The book is fast paced and heavily endowed with footnotes. I learned a lot and found that I was using the dictionary function in my Kindle e-reader quite often. Each chapter is a slice of historical fact and a fast paced read.

A very interesting and balanced perspective that provides a journey through the ages on the subject and guidance on what principles have remained essentially the same and new factors that have come to the fore. A useful thought provoking book overall - especially where it may take you in your world.

Contenporary international security environment requires detail analysis in order provide scientific solutions for sophisticated metodology pertaining for modeling and simulation. This book is an excellent tool for professors and students
best regards

j.d

The book tells about the "Invisible armies" right from the ancient times to the current wars being fought in today's world.
A highly engrossing narrative that keeps the readers hooked on right from the start....

I would certainly recommend the book to all people interested in a history of guerilla warfare and so called small wars. It's interesting to see how often we get caught by not learning lessons from the most powetful teacher - our own history.

This is a grand tour of guerilla warfare from the dawn of humanity up until today. By taking the long view Boot puts things into perspective, like the fact that insurgents seldom succeed. However, since 1945, their chances seem to have improved somewhat. The way the book is structured into eight sections and 64 chapters is interesting in itself. Here are chapters on “Tribal wars of mass destruction”, “Irregulars in the Age of reason”, “High Noon for Empire”, “The Bomb throwers”, “Radical Chic”, “Foco or Loco” and “Arafats Odyssey”. I also like how Boot brings small details into the text, like for instance the colors of Castro’s Chevy and the way in which Michael Collins outfoxed the British on his bicycle in Dublin.

Fascinating study on Guerrilla warfare. The anecdotes of famous military and guerrilla leaders through the ages were provocative. Max Boot is a great story teller. His analysis is critical without being political.

Max Boot provides a masterful view of the history of insurgets. Through his eyes we see that insurgent warfare is not something that is new, but has been with us for thousands of years. In addition, he makes a good case for this type of warfare replacing traditional force-on-force conflits for the foreseeable future.

Well researched and presented. A very complete compendium of this kind of activity with very interesting philosophical overlay.

Perhaps more time could have been spent on the religious Catholic/Protestant/Muslim resurections.

This authoritative text discribes the "Invisible Armies", insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. Bite sized vingettes tell the history of these, sometimes epic, struggles. A long book but well worth the money and time to read. To understand today's warfare you must have a grounding in these "Invisible Wars". Thanx the store for providing this book for the Kindle!

I enjoy reading history and especially war histories and was looking forward to this one. But I found myself struggling to read the first 21 chapters. Finally I got to the American Revolution and the "Winning of the West" 1848-1890 in which I had a particular interest and I have read a lot of history from this era. Chapter 22 was the end for me. All he did was cover Geronimo and Custer neither of which were even particularly good guerrilla actions and he never even mentioned the finest guerrilla warriors of this era - the Comanches who ran the Apaches and other tribes out of their territory in Texas and even pushed back the frontier in the middle 1800's. Most historians consider the Comanches to be the finest light cavalry of their time and they fought in true guerrilla fashion. The final blow for me was on page 150 where he mentions that Custer's Seventh Cavalry "was equipped with inferior single-shot Colt revolvers". Never heard of a single shot revolver and most people would be quite surprised to learn that the Colt revolver was "inferior". Maybe someday I can pick it up again and try the more modern stories, but it may be awhile.

This book will satisfy the thirst of any historian and would be an exceptional textbook to any high school history class or military science class. Max Boot's book is well written, easy to read, and hard to put down. His approach is honest and objective. The final purpose is that this will make a great gift.

Difficult read, but detailed history of guerrilla warfare and terrorist exploits worldwide. Clarifies confusion on my part on who are the good guys and bad guys. Some remote history is hard to follow due to my inadequate knowledge. Particularly interesting was chapter on Arafat.

An absolute must for all history and warfare buffs. Don't let the number of pages turn you away, this book explains in detail and examples the importance of and necessity for small unit hit and run tactics of war.

reading is not finished ( only 8% ....) but, yet, at this moment, I'm very interested by this book because it describes an generally unknown history aspect; so, it is possible to better understand the past and the present .

The book was just laundry-list boring, a plethora of dates and names without context that was the failing of most history texts when I was growing up. I honestly couldn't be bothered to waste my time slogging through the entire 700-odd pages of this monstrosity. I recommend that you spend your money and time on something more worthwhile and interesting than this book. Zzzzz...

I can't imagine anyone writing a better historical survey of guerrilla warfare than this excellent book by Max Boot. After I finished it, I realized that I had virtually no disagreements or criticisms, just sporting comments that one might make in a casual conversation--expanding on one topic, wondering why Boot didn't cover this war or campaign, asking him if he saw this or that book also. If the author had listened to all such comments from readers of his drafts, though, he'd have produced a book 7,500 pages long rather than 750. I particularly liked his frequent explicit comparisons between tactics, techniques, and procedures of guerrilla movements of the distant past and ones of the present, starting with "targeted assassinations" by Republican Romans similar to actions by Israelis against Hamas and US forces against Al Qaeda (p. 22). Some might object to this. I do not. Repeated emphasis on the universality of guerrilla methods throughout history contributes to making Boot's central point--that there is nothing new or unusual about guerrilla warfare and the attempts by opponents to defeat it. Like any author Boot certainly wants his work to be read as widely as possible. But I sense that as an American, he wants to do his best to demolish the persistent unwillingness of Americans and their government to not prepare for guerrilla or counterguerrilla warfare; to shed hard-won expertise in counterinsurgency as soon as a war involving it is over and get back to "real soldiering" against the armed forces of nation-states; and to avoid guerrilla warfare because it is messy, more ambiguous, and likely to have indecisive outcomes. In this sense, Invisible Armies is an ice-cold dose of historical reality, and we are in Max Boot's debt for administering it.

This is the best written book on Guerrilla Warfare I have seen to date. I would suggest that you
get the hardcover because it is a very informative book with many pages and sources.

Max Boot is one very informed author! You will be totally satisfied with this purchase.

In my mind a guerrilla war would consist mostly of a group of small or irregular, indigenous forces (often with the aid of outside powers) who had the intention of overthrowing a current government but were too small to confront the existing power in open conflict. Because of this, they would use many methods of indirect or small group combat techniques. I was interested in learning more about this and what techniques and historical examples had been successful, and what not.

However, I found the author's definition of guerrilla warfare to be so broad as to become useless. For example, he discussed raids by the English on the French countryside during the 100 Years War as falling into this category. To me, those raids were not so much intent on the long term goal of capturing and holding a large territory, but more for immediate financial gain. Any combat outside that of direct, large scale conflict, fell into his definition.

I could certainly be wrong in this understanding, but this book did nothing to discuss what the actual goals were if I am wrong.

Disappointing.

The book is overly wordy; author takes far too long to make his points. In fact, he makes nearly all of them in the intro, which could be several pages shorter. The body of the book is mostly a listing of guerilla wars throughout history.

I know this author by reputation - have read some of his previous publications. This book given as a gift to a relative - an undergrad on an ROTC scholarship and hoping for a military career - most immediately - for an active duty assignment upon graduation - in today's USA military now on severe downsizing of officer corps and much publicized cut backs of campus ROTC programs - and therefore, NOT AT ALL a career certainty - nor some have said: even a realistic HOPE. Thus, my gift a timely and relative (I hope) useful addition to a young student's library. But, alas, perhaps, also a title related, only in vain, to a hoped for career choice. I'll actually read the book sometime in the future. Boot in past readings is an excellent expositor of complicated military issues for a general audience - which given- in our time - the extremely low per cent of citizens with an ACTUAL DIRECT EXPERIENCE is a true - tho perhaps unintended - service.

This is a very enjoyable detailed history of warfare through exposition and analysis of insurgencies against the established order and the response. The book is very informative on familiar and not so familiar insurgencies and their leaders. Boot is very adept at describing military actions as well as personalities and character of the leading participants on both sides.
There are no less than 64 episodes from ancient to modern times covering guerrillas, terrorists, anarchists, and counterinsurgency (COIN) towards each. It's virtually 3 books in one, very extensive; the only thing I see missing is the Haymarket episode. Evaluations are made with refreshing realism and honesty. To characterize the Islamic revolutions, in contrast to current popular altruism and political correctness, Boot cites Samuel Huntington's “clash of civilizations.” There is no comfort in the power of America, nor promotion of human rights and naive faith in international law. Despite telling us that anarchy not always militant, Boot doesn't cite Tolstoy.
The book ends with Santana's realistic admonition “Only the dead are safe; only the dead have seen the end of guerrilla war.” Depressing but becoming more and more true.
A summary, or review, can be culled from the 'Implications' section at the end of book.
Guerrilla warfare is not new, having been used in Mesopotamia, ancient China as well as Irish Scottish and American rebels against the British empire.
Unconventional tactics are not, as commonly thought, specifically Eastern having been applied in Europe as far back as insurgencies against Rome.
Guerrilla tactics and terrorism have been subject to both underestimation and overestimation as in Haiti.
Insurgencies are having more success since 1945 although odds are still against them.
Conventional tactics don't work against unconventional threats.
Few countries have succeeded by terror in foreign venues as Algeria, Napoleon in Spain and Haiti.
Population-centric counterinsurgency often succeeds. After successful counterinsurgency, Boot describes Templar in Morocco, Lansdale in the Philippines and Petraus in the Iraq surge of 2007. Other examples are N. Ireland, El Salvador, and Malaya. Boot compares the intellectualism of Petraus to that of French General Hubert Lyuatey in Morocco and Indochina and contrasts his realism in Iraq to the Pollyana altruism and hesitancy of Westmoreland in Vietnam, although Westmoreland was plagued by the micromanagement of LBJ.
Legitimacy is difficult to achieve in a foreign country as in South Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Most insurgencies are long lasting. Attempts for quick victory are doomed to failure as the US has learned at great cost.
Guerrillas are most successful with outside support. There are many examples in the text with the exception being Michael Collins in Ireland.
Technology is becoming more important to terrorists, with the Internet becoming a weapon of choice.
Another theme is the unbalance of expense. COIN is much more expensive than terrorism or guerrilla troop action.
The lessons I take are not emphasized in the concluding section. First, that guerrilla and terrorist warfare are much more extensive than open war. The biggest surprise is the count of actions, especially the recent ones. Second, that insurgents must evolve and seek open war to achieve their goal of statehood. Third, and most important, is that it's not about to stop.
Besides an acronym glossary there is a database consisting of nearly 400 actions around the world since 1775 to 2012. The amazing thing is that so many are well covered in the text.

A compelling survey of irregular warfare from the pre-Christian era to the present, "Invisible Armies" covers both guerrilla fighting, which Boot calls "the oldest form of warfare," and terrorism, which he considers "strikingly modern." While exhaustively researched, this is not a scholarly tome, but a lively account, betraying Boot's journalistic training, of when and how non-regular armies, be they partisans, guerrillas, or terrorists, have managed to achieve their aims--and when they haven't.

In a nutshell, Boot's argument is that small, irregular forces can win against larger armies when the smaller forces have popular support at home, ideally combined with external support and/or the approval of the broader public. Foreign occupiers trying to impose their will by main force will, no matter how great their firepower, have an uphill battle to fight, as the US found to its dismay in Vietnam. Successful counterinsurgency tactics will almost always rely on a combination of force with public relations; apparent exceptions, such as the Russian use of scorched-earth techniques in the Second Chechen War, actually prove the rule, as the Russian army was, technically, on its own territory, and was allied with the Kadyrov family.

While the concept is simple, arriving at it has not been, and Boot traces the fortunes of various insurgents and counterinsurgents through the ages, from ancient Mesopotamia to medieval Scotland, the American West, Algeria, Indochina, Afghanistan, and back to modern Mesopotamia, aka the Middle East. The circular structure is no accident, as Boot is, above all else, a master storyteller, and every chapter in the book is full of punchy phrases and vivid action. As I said above, this is an exhaustively researched piece of non-fiction, as well as weighing in at in impressive 700+ pages, but it is anything but dry. Serious scholars of warfare may find it too shallow for their liking, but readers looking for an introduction to the topic of irregular warfare are likely to find this informative, thought-provoking, and an absolutely cracking read.

The Vietnam War was the watershed event of my youth. The Liberal-leaning media elites of that era dedicated themselves to propagandizing the American people that: "We can't win in Vietnam because a guerilla insurgency can't be defeated by conventional armies."

The media libs started the propaganda up again during the Iraq War of 2001-2008 only to be proven abysmally wrong when the Iraqi guerilla movement suddenly folded under the "surge" of General Petraeus after wreaking a firestorm of terror for several years.

Because we Americans have our own revolutionary heritage of guerilla war in evicting the British from our territory, we like to imagine that guerilla movements are popular uprisings against oppression. We glorify the guerilla movements that succeed and forget the ones that fail. This often leads the left-leaning among our citizens to conclude that we are wrong by definition when WE are the power that fights guerillas.

We also tend to give guerilla warfare more credit than it is due.

We remember that American guerillas succeeded in freeing the American South from British occupation in the Revolution, but forget that Confederate guerillas entirely failed to break the Union's hold on the South in the Civil War. We remember that Castro's communist guerilla insurgency prevailed in Cuba, but forget that communist guerillas were defeated in every other country in our hemisphere, including our own Puerto Rico. We remember that Communist guerillas broke the will to fight of the French and later the Americans in Vietnam, but forget that the British colonial administrations quashed similar guerillas in most other de-colonializing Asian countries that went on to become anti-Communist and pro-Western. We remember the guerilla-like tactics of Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" character, but forget that the true end of Scotland's William Wallace was to be drawn and quartered by the victorious English and his dismembered body parts placed on display in a travelling circus.

Thus, it is important to de-romanticize guerilla movements and make clear that they come in all kinds. Some are noble, some are evil. Some win, some lose. Author Max Boot EDUCATES US TO THIS UNDERSTANDING by providing a synopsis of 64 episodes in the history of guerilla warfare --- from the dawn of civilization to the present.

A book this broad is by definition going to be hit-and-miss. Some of the early chapters are recaps of familiar history: Romans vs. Barbarians and U.S. Cavalry vs. Indians.

The chapters on the Vietnam War are excellent, but the book by its broad-based nature doesn't have room to expound upon them in great depth. Nevertheless it does cover the BASICS of our war against the Communist guerillas in South Vietnam, and explains why the effort went awry at an early date. I have to give kudos to Boot, who I believe leans to the right politically, for giving an absolutely objective account of our war in Vietnam, including an analysis of mistakes made by our generals. The only problem here is that the scope of the book naturally limits the amount of discussion that can be given to the Vietnam War.

The book was in general not as American-centric as I would have preferred. Nothing is said about General Winfield Scott's remarkable pacification of Mexican guerillas during the Mexican War. Likewise, not enough of substance is said about the suppression of Confederate guerillas during our Civil War. There is too much digression into John Brown's miniscule raid and the after-the-war Ku Klux Klan. Perhaps not enough is said about the Philippine-American war of 1899-1908 in which the American expeditionary army defeated a well-organized native Filipino insurgency in the northern islands and then defeated and pacified a Muslim insurgency in the southern islands. Nothing is said about the pacification of the incipient guerilla war in Puerto Rico in the 1940s and 1950s.

Likewise, some recent topics of nearby interest, such as the 40-year guerilla war in Colombia, are glossed over. This was a classic multi-faceted guerilla war in the planets' most guerilla-friendly terrain that was finally defeated by cooperation between Colombia and the USA. Or what about neighboring Mexico's contemporary war against the drug mafias? Is that a guerilla conflict against well-armed insurgents or a judicial process?

However, the book does give a good account of Fidel Castro's overthrow of the Batista Government in Cuba by guerilla tactics. It points out that Castro was a small-time operator whose tiny force succeeded because of Castro's sheer force of character and because the Batista government was a vacuous government that existed in name only. It likewise provides an enthralling description of legendary guerilla leader "Che" Guevera --- an even more forceful character than Fidel Castro, who was killed fighting the Bolivian government. This chapter proves that even the most legendary guerillas face long odds. Few die of natural causes.

The chapter I most liked was the inspiring story of how General Petraeus' leadership of "The Surge" turned a seemingly lost war against the Iraqi guerillas into a successful outcome:

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More conventionally minded soldiers harrumphed that Petraeus was turning soldiers into social workers, but that criticism was far off the mark. The number of insurgents killed or locked up soared in 2007 (U.S. forces wound up detaining 27,000 Iraqis) but without generating the popular backlash that had accompanied offensive action earlier in the war. The difference was that now troops living in Iraqi neighborhoods were able to gain tips from the populace that allowed them to pinpoint insurgents and avoid the sort of counterproductive roundups of young males that had occurred in years past.
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Max Boot does a fine job of covering a wide variety of guerilla war topics. He accomplishes his purpose of demystifying and de-emotionalizing guerilla warfare. Guerilla wars are shown to be common, not necessarily noble, and usually losing --- but winning enough times to encourage disaffected populations to keep waging them.

The critique is that in a book this broad-based it is to be expected that some topics will not be of interest to every reader. I was not much interested in the ancient history of guerilla warfare, nor of the contemporary Palestinian Uprising, of which I have heard way more than I want to already. However, that's just my personal preference. Other readers may enjoy these topics. I also think that people who aren't military history buffs and haven't encountered these topics before will find them more interesting than those who are already familiar with them.

A casual reader of history, and especially one who has not much studied guerilla warfare, is likely to thoroughly enjoy every aspect of this book. A military history buff will probably want to cherry pick it. Cherry-picking IS a great way to digest the book because each chapter can be understood independently. Among the wide variety of topics covered, I think most readers will find that enough are interesting to make the book well worthwhile their read.

This is a great read and very informative. Max Boot provides a history of non-conventional warfare and examines wars fought by guerillas and terrorists over the last few thousand years. Boot views guerilla warfare as a tactic of last resort used by the weak. His key insight is that countries facing strong conventional armies wars often have no choice but to use hit-and-run tactics.

Boot writes about all the major conflicts to feature irregular warfare and includes chapters on the American War of Independence, Mao, Castro, Michael Collins, John Brown, Lawrence of Arabia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Garibaldi, Al Qaeda, Algeria, Robert the Bruce, Arafat, Hezbollah, the American Indians and lots of other conflicts. There are 64 chapters and at 784 pages, the book is comprehensive.

Many commanders have often made the mistake of using conventional tactics against guerillas. In Vietnam, most of the Army's leaders started their careers in WW2. Generals like Westmoreland were unable to adapt their tactics to deal with an opponent who would not stand and fight. Because North Vietnam avoided major set-piece battles the US got dragged into fighting a counterinsurgency, which it was not trained to fight.

In Boot's opinion the US has too much firepower for any future adversary to try and take it on in a conventional conflict. Given its role as global policemen the US is more likely to be drawn into small messy wars in emerging countries with enemies who don't have tanks and fighter aircraft. The military will, more often than not, have to fight conflicts that resemble its experiences in Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Boot is concerned that the US is ignoring this reality and is still focused on training for large conventional wars against sophisticated opponents.

Boot illustrates that fighting insurgencies is not new. Fabius Maximus, a Roman general, is widely regarded as the father of guerrilla warfare. After Hannibal humiliated the Romans in three major set-piece battles. Fabius avoided meeting Hannibal in battle. Instead, he tried to exhaust him in a long war of attrition by attacking his supply lines.

Boot stresses that it is important for occupiers to retain the support of local people. Scorched earth tactics and reprisals against the civilian population rarely work and are usually counter-productive. They just encourage the locals to join the guerillas. Boot claims that the North Vietnamese treated the peasants in the south with respect. In Boot's view US tactics in Iraq, before General David Petraeus took control, provide an example of how not to fight an insurgency. Boot believes the Army needs to produce more leaders like Petraeus who are prepared to challenge conventional thinking.

The best guerrilla leaders are also good at publicity. Boot believes that propaganda and public opinion are important tools in modern warfare and it is necessary for occupiers to win the communications war. The use of the term "hearts and minds" was first used by the British during the Malayan Emergency in the 1950s. The British prevailed because they successfully maintained the trust of the native Malayans and this discouraged the local population from siding with the communists. The public in Western democracies usually gets tired of conflicts that drag on too long, especially if they are not clear about the objectives. The terrorists often don't have to win militarily, they just need to do enough to change public opinion. Boot uses Vietnam and the French experience in Algeria to illustrate this point.

This is a great book and surprisingly easy to read. If you are interested in military history you will probably enjoy it.

Boot tries to make every battle ever fought between men somehow fall into the category of guerrilla warfare or terrorism. It's a fairly useless re-interpretation of many conflicts throughout history, with little analysis or new insight, and lot's of juvenile praise for the various leaders, on both sides. I was expected something much more relevant and fresh.

This is very well researched and important book. While the size of the book may be a bit daunting to some, it might be better to think of this as a series of short pieces on different guerrilla operations throughout history. The subtitle truthfully describes the book's timeline, much of the book, probably about 2/3, is devoted to war as practiced in the 20th and 21st centuries.

We get portraits of fighting involving American Minutemen, the South African Boers, anarchists, the Vietcong, the Taliban, the Palestinians and Al-Queda, as well as the measures to counter them taken by the British, Americans, Russians and others.

As noted, the book is written in short chapters, and is probably best read that way. Plowing through it start to finish might be a bit like doing the same with an encyclopedia. But sections are often neatly summed up in pretty reasonable conclusions. He notes for example, that we may have the terminology wrong on this topic. He feels now that guerrilla war is basically war as normally practiced and what we call conventional war is actually something of a department from the norm.

Hopefully, the book becomes required reading at the military academies. And anyone in Congress should read the author's concluding chapter - 12 Articles, which sums up lessons learned from his study of guerrilla warfare.

was it riverting like john mosier's books? NO!

After reading the mostly positive reviews, i was hoping for an insightful history on insurgencies. But it felt more like a crash course & not a very good one.

On a positive note, the author showed that insurgencies are not a slam dunk like we would assume they are to be. For every vietnam, there is hamas. Also the author discredits the need for special forces as well which is interesting as we seem to be full of book on SEALs, delta etc. So that was interesting & something to consider [even the author of Ghost force[unofficial history of SAS] advocated the closure of SAS in 1990-so who knows...

I found the book useful because it does discredit the success of insurgency as a successful strategy against a well-armed & funded conventional army, esp 100% of the time[see hamas].

So the book is not a riverting read about insurgencies like John Mosier's books on WW 1 or 2, but it does provide a easy guide to the history of insurgencies for newbies like myself.