Various vignettes over the course of ancient history featuring many well known battles and participants. The authors necessarily do not go into great detail into each encounter and the personalities as entire books are written on each subject. Nonetheless, sufficient context is provided so that the reader can appreciate the authors' analysis of the factors that led to defeat.

As a fan of ancient history familiar with each of the battles described, I could easily follow the rather cursory summaries provided. Perhaps this would be a bit more difficult for those with no background into the subject matter.

The book flows well and objectively described the various encounters. Further, the authors' analysis of the strategic errors are interesting and rarely found standard battle narratives. ( )