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Angus Konstam
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Ancient World Commanders (The Commanders Series) Hardcover – August 19, 2009

by Angus Konstam (Author)
4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings
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Ancient World Commanders from antiquity to the medieval period, including the main military leaders of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Israel, Greece, Rome, Carthage, Huns, Goths, Visigoths, Alans, Vandals, Kievan, Rus, The Vikings, Moors, Franks, Normans, Mongols. From the mythological warrior Achilles to the Chinese general and strategist Zhou Yu, this superbly illustrated book describes more than 160 prominent war leaders of the "ancient world"-from the beginning of recorded history in about 2,000 BC , to the end of the 5th century AD.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    192 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Compendium
  4. Publication date
    August 19, 2009
  5. Dimensions
    8 x 0.75 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1906347298
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1906347291
  8. See all details
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The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Angus Konstam is a military and maritime historian and author. Formerly a curator at the Royal Armouries, and curator at the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Museum, he is now a full-time author, with over 70 books in print.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Compendium; Illustrated edition (August 19, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1906347298
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1906347291
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.7 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 0.75 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.0 4.0 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

About the author

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Angus Konstam

Angus Konstam

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With over 50 history books in print, Angus is a widely recognised and much-published historian. While he specialises in military and naval history he has also written numerous more general history books, designed to make the subject more accessible to a wider audience. Uniquely he has been able to draw on his expertise as a senior museum curator who has worked on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as on his academic training as a historian and as a maritime archaeologist.

His latest book is a full-length biography: Blackbeard: America's Most Notorious Pirate, which is published by Wiley & Sons. of New York (June 2006)

Angus is also just finished writing a history of the Allied landings at Salerno in September 1943 for the British publisher Pen & Sword, and he is currently working on a new project, with the working title of Supership: The Quest for the Renaissance Battleship.

Angus lives in Edinburgh, in Scotland.

Customer reviews

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Top reviews from the United States

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5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2016
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An excellent book...!
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Anibal Madeira
2.0 out of 5 stars Weak book for such mighty commanders
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2013
Angus Konstam is an excellent historian, specialized in naval and military history. He can do magnificent monographs like "strongholds of the picts", magnificent display books like Cities of the Renaissance world among dozens of great publications. This is not one of them.

Clearly this book hadn't much time invested on it. There was no fact checking (there are dozens of wrong dates for example), many descriptions have terrible mistakes, anachronistic pictures without sources, wrongly referenced pictures, many grammar mistakes, missing text repeated sentences, Etc.

The first edition of this book was in 2008 and the objective was to provide the reader with a quick overview of the most important military commanders of the ancient world and their most important deeds. With that information"...the list can be viewed as a tool that can place these leaders in a wider context, tracing the early developments of history through the activities of the commanders who first defined the military art." But unfortunately it fails both purposes. The first objective falls short because much information is incorrect, so it becomes unreliable; the second because it is organized in alphabetical order...the reader can't see the development of the art of war, or the context in which each leader was inserted, or their opponents! You go from Stilicho, to Sudas (the 15th cent BC Bharata King), to Sulla; unless you're already acknowledged in the field it becomes hard to read the relevant biographies for a time period or event, because there isn't even a compared chronological table!

The obvious solutions would be to separate each leader through smaller time periods, or military confrontations...as it is it's less useful than an online encyclopedia bio.

The mistakes are many, almost in every page, and I will only state a few:

Dates - You will learn that Alcibiades was born in 450 BC diying in 40 BC; or that Antiochus III lived from 241 - 197 BC but reigned ten more years until 187 BC (UNDEAD); Ardashir I of Sassan reigned from 226 - 241 BC (!!!!); Aulus Plautius C. 45 - 60 AD is probably the most successful adolescent general...and I even haven't left the "A" letter!

Mistakes - in the Cleon bio it states "...and captured an Athenian force stranded on the island of Sphacteria.". In fact he was the leader of the Athenian force that captured the Spartan force at that engagement.

Pictures - In the Marcus Junius Brutus Bio, it has a picture currently attributed to Lucius Junius Brutus. That statue is far earlier than Marcus Junius Brutus (the statue is dated IV to II cent BC). It even fails to provide the correct museum where it is displayed (in the book says Museo della civita, but it isn't there...it's in the Capitoline Museums. Palazzo dei Conservatori).

It needs considerable revision and a change in structure.
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