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Warfare and Society in Europe, 1792-1914. By Geoffrey Wawro. New York: Roudedge, 2000. ISBN 0-415-21444-0 Maps. Bibliography. Index. Pp. ix, 246. $85.00.
Wawro, among the best of the new generations of military historians, has written the best extant survey of the long century of European military dominance that began in 1792 with the French Revolutionary Wars and ended in the trenches of 1914. His willingness to take an essentially chronological approach makes the work's paperback edition especially well suited as a primary text for military history courses and as collateral reading for general courses in the period. The work, however, has an analytical rather than a narrative perspective. Wawro describes modern war as "cudgeled into existence" by Napoleon, who synergized Old Regime military reforms, new energies and talents unfettered by the French revolution, and his own...