Book Description
Drawing on a very wide range of unpublished and previously unexploited sources, Martin van Creveld examines the "nuts and bolts" of war. He considers the formidable problems of movement and supply, transportation and administration, often mentioned (but rarely explored) by the vast majority of books on military history. By concentrating on logistics rather than on the more traditional tactics and strategy, van Creveld is also able to offer an original reinterpretation of military history. First Edition Hb (1977): 0-521-21730-X FIrst Edition Pb (1979): 0-521-29793-1
Customer Reviews:
The Big L brought to the masses...kind of.......2007-04-06
Martin Van Creveld's Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton is a highly readable examination of the 'evolution' of the Big L, military logistics, as associated with European wars over the last few hundred years up through WWII. While armies, from ancient to modern times, "march on their bellies" - as Napoleon once said, and thus logistics provide the cornerstone of all successful campaigns, the Big L tends not to be popular reading among historians, amateur and profession alike; in other words military logistics is a hard nut to crack from a literary standpoint. Van Creveld's book is a serious, and at least partially successful, attempt to bring the Big L to the masses (re: not to bookstores and best-seller lists but probably most large metro and university libraries).
In his presentation of the material at hand Van Creveld is careful not to present overwhelming 'facts' and 'logistical trivia', and in doing so is able to keep the readers attention. On the other hand as 'facts' and logistical trivia' are the commodity of the Big L a fair portion of Van Creveld's conclusions and suppositions are hard to reconcile as the reader has little frame of reference from a data standpoint. Thus in trying to make his subject accessible Van Creveld in large part shortchanges the importance of the subject matter. Yet, his prose is accessible and one can walk away for an 'appreciation' for military logistics at a minimum.
Will the reader be well versed with military logistics after reading Van Creveld's book? Absolutely not. However, if one's interest is even slighted piqued by the story Van Creveld presents then there is ample material out there to lose oneself in with respect to the Big L; this is especially true of the dearth of data, statistics and pages dedicated to logistics of the second world war. In the end Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton does a fair job capturing the imagination of the reader on a topic so often lost to even the hardcore military historians out there. It fails to fully 'teach' logistical lessons, but that's forgivable given the subject matter and it's usual inaccessibility. 3.5 stars total.
useful intro to military logistics.......2007-03-09
This is an interesting and thought-provoking book. Much more has been written on this subject since this first came out but as a starting point for anyone interested in military logistics this book can still not be bettered.
Logistics for the Armchair General.......2005-06-28
It has been said that armchair generals think of strategy, whereas professionals study logistics. If that is true, Martin van Creveld has written a book on logistics for armchair generals.
Those familiar with military history and strategic studies are likely familiar with Van Creveld and his proclivity for making bombastic and sweeping assertions on the nature of warfare. "Supplying War" is no exception. (By way of example, he labels Operation Overlord "an exercise in logistic pusillanimity unparalleled in modern military history.")
Originally published in 1976, "Supplying War" was the first book to directly address the critical, but often ignored issues of logistics in warfare with a primary objective of identifying key themes and trends across time. Even Van Creveld's most trenchant critics - and he has many in the academic community - concede that his work was original and reached a large audience, and has therefore largely defined the debate on the subject.
Van Creveld reviews seven historical case studies (17th century feudal warfare, Napoleon's invasion of Russia, the German invasion of France in 1870 and 1914, and Russia in 1940, Rommel's 1942 North African campaign and the Normandy invasion of 1944) and comes to the following general conclusion: In pre-modern military history food (including animal fodder) was the primary logistical concern and most armies were forced to keep moving to survive by living off the land; but the rise of the modern, mechanized army inverted the paradigm, as ammunition and fuel supplies became paramount and armies were increasingly tied to rear-area depots for their survival.
"Supplying War" is as interesting and easy to read as a book on such an inherently dull topic can be. Given the broad impact the book has had serious students of military history will want to read it if only to understand Van Creveld's perspective and arguments.
I would add, however, that no one should read "Supplying War" without also consulting the extremely thoughtful and hard-nosed critique of it written by John Lynn in "Feeding Mars: Logistics in Western Warfare from the Middle Ages to the Present." Lynn's essay points out a number of serious flaws in Van Creveld's approach and conclusions. For instance, Lynn notes that Van Creveld conveniently avoids the issue of naval logistics, which happens to undermine his argument that military forces have only recently been engaged in serious logistical planning. Unlike armies, from at least the time of the Spanish Armada navies have had to engage in sophisticated logistical planning to ensure they had enough food, water and ammunition to complete their mission, and with the arrival of steam power they had to worry about fuel as well.
Lynn points out a number of other convenient omissions in Van Creveld's work, such as the successful use of railroads and steamboats for front-line supply in the US Civil War, the critical and successful role trans-Atlantic and -Pacific US logistics support played in both the First and Second World Wars, and the political constraints on 17th Century warfare that inhibited operations much more than logistical considerations. However, the most convincing (and damning) scrutiny of "Supply War" comes in a section titled "A problem with numbers?" in which Lynn comes very close to accusing Van Creveld of intellectual and academic dishonesty by twisting or misrepresenting quantitative data on the purported rise of ammunition and fuel as a percentage of the overall supply requirements and the selective quotation of certain sources.
In closing, add this book to your reading list, read it carefully and skeptically, consult Lynn's analysis closely and draw your own conclusions.
Accountants, Gamblers and Thieves.......2003-02-01
Studying this book one gets the distinct impression that some of the most acclaimed military men in history were gamblers with a lucky streak or in other words very successful thieves, who solved their own supply problems by stealing it.
That is how Napoleon did it while he was winning, but when he organized his own supply for the Russian campaign he lost. Likewise the Prussian general staff got a reputation for perfect planning while in the field the army operated by chaotic requisition. The Schlieffen plan was unworkable from the start, Patton won by stealing from his neighbor units and ignoring the supply bureaucrats and Rommel overextended himself without a chance of winning ...
Interesting perspectives that give lot of food for thought - even if they may be somewhat biased. For example when Creveldt blames the German general stuff for not preparing the Russian campaign properly he claims that Hitler 's decisions made sense ....
It is a pity that the book stops in 1944; Korea, Vietnam and the Gulf war would be very interesting by comparison.
the best book about the history of logistics.......2002-07-07
Martin Van Creveld provides an interesting overview of how logistics influenced the outcome of miltitary operations. The first part of the book deatils warfare during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the armies had to keep advancing in order in replemish their supplies. If the army stayed in the same area over a large amount of time such as Napoleon's army in Moscow, than the army would run out of supplies. This situation did not change during the Franco-Prussian War in which the Prussian army had to scrounge for food at the outskirts of Paris. All though food remained a problem for the armies there was always a plentiful supply of ammunition since armies of the 18th and 19th centuries expended very little of it. Martin Van Creveld makes some surprising claims in the later part of the book describing twentieth century warfare. Martin Van Creveld believes that the Schlieffen Plan was doomed to failure because of the logistical constraints of the German army. Because most of supplies delivered to the German army were by rail, the desturuction of the railways impeded their advance. Also German planners made no plans to deal with the massive traffic jams in Belgum. The next chapter Van Creveld has an revisionist appraisal of the Germany invasion of Russia in 1941. Van Creveld believes that Germany had the supplies to deal with winter warfare but the inability to transport them across Russia. Due to the difference between German and Russian rail tracks and maintance problems of German engines the supplies never reached the front. Van Creveld strongly criticizes Rommel's handling of the North Africam campaign. Rommel advance to far for his supplies to be replenished. The problem of supply duirng the North African War was that the supplies had to be delivered by trucks that were highly vulnerable to air attack. When Rommel tried to solve the problem by taking Tobruk, he only made matters worse. The ships that arrived at Tobruk were in range of Allied aircraft and as a result sunk. The final Chapter, Van Creveld evaluates Allied operations in Western Europe. Van Creveld believes that Patton's success had to due with the fact that Patton ignored logistic officer's plan for a slow a orderly pace but instead took advantage of the situation to advance quickly. Van Creveld theorizes that Montgomery's narrow front approach could have logistically reached Northwest Germany but were have not captured Berlin. I would highly reccomend this book for anyone who wants a new and interesting perspective about operations during the First and Second World Wars.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Defense Transportation Journal, published by National Defense Transportation Association on September 1, 2004. The length of the article is 400 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army.(Bookshelf Ideas; Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton)(Brief Article)(Book Review)
Author: Kent N. Gourdin
Publication:
Defense Transportation Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 1, 2004
Publisher: National Defense Transportation Association
Volume: 60
Issue: 5
Page: 62(1)
Article Type: Book Review, Brief Article
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
Starting with the premise that Europe was made by its imperial projects as much as colonial encounters were shaped by events and conflicts in Europe, the contributors to Tensions of Empire investigate metropolitan-colonial relationships from a new perspective. The fifteen essays demonstrate various ways in which "civilizing missions" in both metropolis and colony provided new sites for clarifying a bourgeois order. Focusing on the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, they show how new definitions of modernity and welfare were developed and how new discourses and practices of inclusion and exclusion were contested and worked out. The contributors argue that colonial studies can no longer be confined to the units of analysis on which it once relied; instead of being the study of "the colonized," it must account for the shifting political terrain on which the very categories of colonized and colonizer have been shaped and patterned at different times.
Customer Reviews:
A Multi-disciplinary Treatment of the Exclusionary "Other".......2005-01-14
In this collection of essays, Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler have attempted to shed light on an often overlooked aspect of European imperialism; the colonized. Specifically, the authors contend it is that gray area "between the public institutions of the colonial state and the intimate reaches of people's lives that seemed to us to demand more attention." Realizing the diversity of the European colonial experience, the authors wanted to examine whether or not there exists a correlation between the archival histories of the major European imperial powers-Germany, France, Great Britain and the Netherlands. Incorporating what some historians have referred to as "the holy trinity"-gender, race and class-Cooper and Stoler have collected an assemblage of scholarship that takes a look at the indigenous experience, or as the title suggests, tensions that existed within the exclusionary "Other" and their culture of colonization. In keeping with the French Annalist, Marxist tradition of social-economic historiography that had grown popular in the 1960's and 1970's, the essays not only reinforce the evils of capitalistic exploitation, but also incorporate to a large extent, the field of anthropology to the blurred genres of interdisciplinary scholarship. In a sense, the articles read like anthropological field studies in an historical setting. For example, in "Le Bebe en Brousse: European Women, African Birth Spacing, and Colonial Intervention in Breast Feeding in the Belgian Congo" (pp. 287-321), Nancy Rose Hunt, examines the affect colonial institutions had upon a natural birth control method common in many underdeveloped countries, prolonged breast feeding, or birth spacing. Birth spacing and the ethnographic cocoon in which it rests are usually the work of anthropologists not historians. But as we can see from Ms Hunt's argument, the combination of cultural and political studies makes for an interesting blend of social history. In a similar essay titled: "Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in Colonial Southeast Asia" (pp.198-237), Ann Stoler examines the problem of colonial and indigenous union-"mixed bloods"-and the affects this relationship between inclusionary impulses and exclusionary practices has on French and Dutch nationalism. Here again, as her subtitle suggests, the blending of culture and politics, usually the stuff of varying floors of a Humanities building, has come together in a compatible marriage. This book might not appeal to those accustomed to the standard fair of colonial history. The editor's long and winded introduction does not fully prepare the reader for the interesting essays that follow. Had the editors added a conclusion tying the confusing section headings together, and concisely formulated their opening, the finished product would have been more easily digestible. Ending on a positive note, the lengthy bibliography at the end of each article provides the reader with ample fodder for further inquiry. Perhaps destined to never fine a home on an undergraduate syllabus, this work is, noneheless, a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary paradigm that has taken hold of the historical profession.
Customer Reviews:
An encyclopedia of meta-analysis.......2002-03-19
This book is the best overall work on meta-analysis and research synthesis that has appeared in the past decade.All of its chapters are clearly written, and the data sets that are provided to illustrate the various techniques are extremely helpful. A lot of work went into the development of this book, and it shows.
Excellent "How To" Manual.......1997-02-13
For anyone interested in doing research synthesis, meta-analysis, or even a literature review, this is a "must have" in your collection. Various researchers present quite helpful information to save time, sweat, and tears in the process
Book Description
Success in an experimental science such as chemistry depends on good laboratory practice, a knowledge of basic techniques, and the intelligent and careful handling of chemicals.
Practical Organic Synthesis is a concise, useful guide to good laboratory practice in the organic chemistry lab with hints and tips on successful organic synthesis. Topics covered include:
- safety in the laboratory
- environmentally responsible handling of chemicals and solvents
- crystallisation
- distillation
- chromatographic methods
- extraction and work-up
- structure determination by spectroscopic methods
- searching the chemical literature
- laboratory notebooks
- writing a report
- hints on the synthesis of organic compounds
- disposal and destruction of dangerous materials
- drying and purifying solvents
Practical Organic Synthesis is based on a successful course in basic organic chemistry laboratory practice which has run for several years at the ETH, Zurich and the University of Berne, and its course book Grundoperationen, now in its sixth edition.
Condensing over 30 years of the authors’ organic laboratory teaching experience into one easy-to-read volume, Practical Organic Synthesis is an essential guide for those new to the organic chemistry laboratory, and a handy benchtop guide for practising organic chemists.
Average customer rating:
- An overview of synthesis involving nucleoside glycosylation
|
Handbook of Nucleoside Synthesis
Helmut Vorbruggen
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons
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ASIN: 0471093831 |
Book Description
Handbook of Nucleoside Synthesis includes descriptive information regarding the three principal types of nucleoside forming reactions: the Fusion Reaction, the Metal Salt Procedure, and the Hilbert-Johnson Reaction, as well as other miscellaneous methods.
Customer Reviews:
An overview of synthesis involving nucleoside glycosylation.......2002-04-01
There are two general strategies for the synthesis of nucleoside analogues: 1)converting readily available nucleosides and 2)glycosylation of sugar with heterocyclic base. This book ONLY covers the latter one. The first 100 pages are an excellent discussion of synthetic methods to carry out the glycosylation reactions, along with plenty of actual examples. The next 500 pages or so (will anyone really read these? :-)are completely made of charts with records of past published synthesis. These charts list 'Sugar', 'Base' and 'conditions' used for each reaction, as well as the 'products' & 'yields' and ref. The book collected over 1300 reference titles overall and placed them at the end.
This handbook is a great rare-to-find reference in the field of glycosylation. However, do not expect to see all the aspects of nucleoside synthesis from it.
Average customer rating:
|
Managing Wetlands: An Ecological Economics Approach
Manufacturer: Edward Elgar Publishing
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 1843761300 |
Book Description
The extensive destruction of wetlands across Europe represents a significant loss of biodiversity along with its related economic, cultural, ethical and scientific benefits. This volume addresses the critical issues surrounding this environmental change process, employing a range of analytical methods drawn from a variety of disciplines which bridge the social and natural science divide.
The authors begin by exploring the various methodological approaches to the analysis of the causes and consequences of wetland loss in Europe. The findings reveal that a formal decision-support process can be defined which can assist in the search for a more sustainable approach to wetland management. The methods and tools advocated are interdisciplinary and require coordinated action by experts from a variety of different fields. The authors move on to present a series of case studies from which a number of general conclusions can be drawn. In particular, they identify conflicts concerning use, value and interest groups to be the most common in the context of wetland management versus development. Consequently, they argue that scientific analysis requires support from the social sciences in order to better understand and implement more participatory approaches to environmental management.
Given the ongoing depletion of wetland ecosystems throughout the world, this novel interdisciplinary approach to their sustainable management is a timely and valuable exercise. Students, researchers and scholars of environmental economics, environmental science, ecology, geography and environmental politics will find this book to be a useful addition to the literature. It will also help policymakers, international agencies and NGOs to help preserve these valuable environmental resources.
Books:
- The African-American Atlas: Black History and Culture-An Illustrated Reference
- The American Reader : Words That Moved a Nation
- The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier
- The Civil War for Dummies
- The Craft of International History: A Guide to Method
- The Debate on the Constitution : Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification, Part Two: January to August 1788 (Library of America)
- The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody: Great Figures of History Hilariously Humbled
- The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City: Latin America in the Cold War (Convergences: Inventories of the Present)
- The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England
- The Digital Hand: How Computers Changed the Work of American Manufacturing, Transportation, and Retail Industries
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Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army
