THE DECISIVE BATTLES of WORLD HISTORY (The Great Courses) (Audiobook) by Gregory S. Adlrete

 


Published by The Great Courses in 2014.
Lectures delivered by the author, Gregory S. Aldrete.
Duration: 18 hours, 29 minutes.
Unabridged.

As long as there has been war, there has been discussions about which battles were the most important, the most pivotal. This takes some analysis, since the temptation might be to simply discuss the battle that finally ended a long conflict, like Appomattox was the functional end to the American Civil War. 

The Battle of San Jacinto

The temptation might also be to collect a list of the biggest battles of history, but that would exclude Aldrete's tiniest choice - the Battle of San Jacinto. While that battle had less than 2,500 soldiers, he persuasively argues that the battle not only made Texas independent from Mexico, it also set off a chain of events that led directly the the American Civil War, Reconstruction and more.

Adlrete presents the battles in chronological order and spends at least as much time on the background information of each battle as he does on the battles themselves. A few of the entries are not battles, but are entire campaigns.

Almost all of these lectures are informative and entertaining, but I did find the one set in Medieval Japan to be very hard to follow. I found that to be surprising since I took two classes on this topic back in college. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE DECISIVE BATTLES of WORLD HISTORY (The Great Courses) (Audiobook) by Gregory S. Adlrete.

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