"'Battle and Maneuver in the Mexican Revolution'" Topic

The final two volumes covering 1915 are now available from Amazon.

..I got mine awhile ago ..still reading the 1st vol. Definitely a must have ,,for this period.I;ve learned a lot.

Whoops! That should of course be 'Maneuver and Battle…'.

These two books were published only five days ago, jurgenation.

Good to see such information in English. But at over 500 pages per volume, its more than even a comprehensive overview.

..in the US ,,I have had these books since October,,thru Amazon,,so I don't know what to tell you.Other than they are great books.

Any chance of these being published in electronic format?

Just to make sure we're all on the same page, the author sent me an email a couple of days ago announcing the final books in his series, making it a total of five books.

Volume 1 was published two years ago, and covers through the end of 1912 with a little over into 1913. Volume 2 was published a year ago in two parts, Part 1 1913 and Part 2 1914. Depending on which Amazon page comes up these might be labeled Volume 2 and Volume 3 rather than Volume 2 Part 1 and Volume 2 Part 2.

The latest two books can be a little hard to find on Amazon and I have used the full book title "Maneuver and Battle in the Mexican Revolution" in the search window to get all five to come up.

The latest two books are subtitled "The Military-Agricultural Complex Rebirth" and "The Military-Agricultural Complex Death" and are shown on Amazon as Volume 4 and Volume 5 with publication dates of 30 December 2017. Each book clocks in at more than 500 pages, so all told among the five books we have more than 2,500 pages of detailed information on maneuvers and battles of the Mexican Revolution!

I have a long standing project, percolating far too slowly, on adapting the Piquet Barrage WWI game rules by Eric Burgess for a series of Mexican Revolution battles and campaigns, and Dr. Janssens books have proved invaluable in researching my project. These books include the most extensive breadth and depth of detailed information on maneuvers, battles, and weapons performance in the Mexican Revolution that I have found available in English, and I am looking forward with keen anticipation to adding his two newest books to my growing Mexican Revolution library!

Enjoy your games!

,,okay ,,now I know..I did not know there were 5Volumes..I have the first 3…sheesh,,2 more ,,,,thanx for correction.

I own the first 3, am half finished with the second so far. Really enjoy them.

Thanks for letting me know about the latest titles, eventually I want to get those also.

Links would be nice!

Thanks for the heads-up :)

Own the first three, hadn`t realised the other two had been released, will order later in the year.

Wonderful books, though to be honest I`m struggling through vol.2 at present – just no time.

Well, here I am, back on the computer again with a few minutes of spare time to continue catching up on everything after house guests from overseas have safely returned home and with our local traveling around with them behind me. The latest two of Dr. Janssens books arrived over two weeks ago, and I have just had a chance to browse through them, so this isn't a review, just some initial impressions and a description of what is in there.

First of all, as with the three earlier books, these are a "must-have" for my slowly moving project on adapting the "Piquet-Barrage" WWI game rules to tactical battle games and maneuver campaigns of the Mexican Revolution. These two new books cover the battles in 1915, large and small, in over 1,000 pages of text with maps and other illustrations. The battle descriptions are very detailed as in the earlier books naming the units in the battles, showing deployments on maps, and detailing specific maneuvers, incidents, and individual heroic moments that highlight effects to include in games.

The first of the new books includes 350 pages of narrative text that begins in late 1914 and continues through the two battles of Celaya in April 1915 as detailed in a 50-page chapter at the end of the book. Also, there is a Glossary, a 20-page Timeline for August 1914 through January 1916, approximately 100 pages of endnotes that include reference citations as well as details and vignettes that add to the narrative text in the main chapters, and lastly about 50 pages of index. The first book weighs in at 520 pages of text plus about 35 pages of introductory material.

The Introduction sets the stage for the changed nature of 1915 summarizing the evolution of the conflict through the Madero rebellion of 1910-1913, then Huerta's Coup in 1913-1914, leading to sectionalism and "civil war" of 1915. There are interesting analogies in the Introduction, as well as in later chapters, comparing this phase of the Mexican Revolution with strategic and economic aspects of the American Civil War. Topics in the Introduction include Sectionalism …, Zapatismo and the Military-Agricultural Complex, Popular Militarism, and lastly Themes and Theses that includes sub-topics: Scope, Scale, Sophistication, and Speed of Military Operations; The Defense Establishment; American Intervention; and Title Thesis and Organization. This last topic lists 20 battles and provides a handy graphic as a chapter guide to campaigns and battles across the several theaters and over time.

After the introduction there are chapters that include maneuvers leading up to battles and then detailed discussion of the battles themselves, usually followed by after action analyses. As mentioned, the first book covers through April 1915. The second book picks up the narrative in April 1915 and carries it through December 1915 in about 400 pages of text including a Conclusion as well as Appendix A: Sectionalism and the Military-Agricultural Complex in North American, and Appendix B: Strategy. There are about 15 pages of Bibliography and about 100 pages of chapter end notes, with the second book weighing in at 512 pages.

There is plenty of material here for me to work with, and Dr. Janssens publishes faster than I can research and adapt rules sets, but I'm hoping to catch up in the fullness of time … This multi-volume work is the most comprehensive military history of the Mexican Revolution available in English, and as far as I know is also the only one in English. I am very happy to have it in my library and I highly recommend these books to anyone interested in the military campaigns and battles of the Mexican Revolution.

I'm fully armed with these books focusing on military maneuvers and battles, along with a variety of biographical books on the leading participants, several political-social histories, as well as the "Contemptible Little Armies" and "The Men Who Would Be King" rules sets that will all help inform my adaptation of the "Piquet-Barrage" game toward my interpretation of maneuver and battle in the Mexican Revolution. Now if I could just squeeze out some more time to work on it all!!

Enjoy your games, and your books!

Jan

p.s.

Here is a link to Amazon that shows all five books, sorry that I didn't include it earlier.

link

Already told my kids what I want for my birthday :)