"In The Age of Battles the late Russell Weigley wrote of an era when commanders sought out grand battle as the principal means of obtaining decision. This quest for decisive results at a reasonable cost was elusive, as Weigley noted in his introduction:
The age of battles nevertheless proved to be an age of prolonged, indecisive wars, wars sufficiently interminable that again and again the toll in lives, not to mention the costs in material resources, rose grotesquely out of proportion to anything their authors could hope to gain from them.
While writing about a 200-year block of time set in Europe, Weigley's book was published, quite ironically, in 1991, the year that a US-led force seemingly trounced the inept Iraqi Army, led by its equally inept leader Saddam Hussein, in Operation Desert Storm. Once described as a "triumph without victory," that brief but grand battle did not really accomplish as much as we originally thought. While the goals of that war were limited and the results temporary, at least it did not produce a disproportionate loss in terms of lives or treasure.
In this, his fourth book, Boston University historian Cathal Nolan expands the lens and framework of Weigley's critique forward another 130 years. Nolan finds decisive battles to be rare events in wars between great powers between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. Despite their poor historical pedigree, the allure of short fights producing sure victories by brilliant commanders was deeply inculcated into both civilian leaders and the professional militaries…"
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