This book was very well written, it details Hannibal's military prowess but also focuses in his life. I read this book a long time ago but forgot to add a review for it. Thank you to Netgalley for giving me early access to this book.

Patrick Hunt goes into a through history of the life and military history of the famous Carthage leader Hannibal. He begins with his father and how he was taught military tactics, and also take care of the people that his family was in charge of. He then leads you through some of his father’s battles up to his death and when Hannibal takes over. He would then lead Carthage in what would be called the second Punic War. The author takes you through his journey through the Alps with elephants and then after resting his defeating of the Roman Army in Cannae in 216 BC. This would just be the first of many defeats by his army over a much larger force that being the Romans. He would use different strategies in defeating the legions that were sent out to destroy him. What he never did was attack Rome itself. The author goes into that plus the one Roman General who was able to force him to leave the battle field and then leave Italy. He would then go into North Africa and a few other places. What really makes this book is the amount of research that the author has done and also that Hannibal and his strategies to this day are still taught. He is still considered as one of the best military leaders. Overall a very good book.

Not a biography I thought it was going to be. Too much geography. Made me fall asleep. I wanted find personal life and less military

I truly enjoyed reading this book. The author took me on a whirlwind tour of the life of Hannibal and made me realize his motivations. Like many people I only knew about the elephants, but the author made Hannibal into someone I enjoyed learning about and expanding my knowledge for. This is not some dry reading of dates and events but the life of an ancient general come alive. You could feel hannibal's passion against Rome and his sense of duty to the promise he made is father in every page.

Throughout Hunt's work, you can tell that his knowledge and enthusiasm about his subject is abundant. This is an excellent book for someone wanting to gain introductory knowledge about Hannibal and would work well in a classroom specifically focused on the time period or military history. A great read!

An excellent biography of a fascinating man! Hannibal's life has always interested me, but I've read very little about him. This book does a great job in bringing the ancient military titan to life. One of the difficulties in studying ancient history is the fact that sources are both limited and contradictory. Author Patrick Hunt does a great job of piecing together the ancient source materials to construct his narrative. Hunt had to fill in many of the gaps himself when discussing Hannibal's personality and the way his mind worked. I appreciate the fact that Hunt was willing to make these conjectures while at the same time making it clear to the readers what was in the history books and what was an educated guess. Hunt also did a good job of adequately explaining the military strategies used without making this merely a book on tactics. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in ancient history.

I received a digital copy of this book for free from the publisher and was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I express in this review are entirely my own.

Not my first book on the "elephant raider" but this will be enjoyed any military and history buffs alike. P. Hunt is very well researched even visiting some sights and his descriptions allow you to imagine that YOU are on an elephant heading into battle

This is a good history for people who don't know a lot about the topic already. I feel I can say this from a position of authority because, when I started this book, my knowledge began and ended with the fact that this was that guy who brought elephants with this army over the Alps in the far distant past. I couldn't even have made a decent guess about when Hannibal lived.

Now I know that he arrived at a time when, in retrospect, Carthage's decline seemed irreversible. Although Hannibal had shaky support from short-sighted politicians, he managed to go off to Carthage's colonies in today's Spain as a teenager and – after the early death of his father – raise, organize, and lead a ragtag army (and elephants) to the Italian peninsula. There, he spooked the hell out of Rome for a long time before he fell victim to Rome's ability to learn from its own mistakes. Rome tried attacking him head on and got whipped. A Roman leader named Fabius said, “Hey, let's try not attacking him head on – let's avoid contact and weaken his supply lines.” Hannibal stomped around rural Italy for more than a decade, trying to provoke the Romans into a conventional attack. He failed. His allies, denied plunder, abandoned him. He hung on for a long time as things got worse, but eventually abandoned the effort and headed home, where Rome smashed his homeland. Hannibal had an especially interesting post-Roman life as a high-profile refugee/outlaw. That's a lot of knowledge to get out of a book.

This book gets a solid B+ for using language which does not drive the non-expert to the Kindle dictionary function. Still, there were occasions when terminology could have used some explaining, specifically, montane (Kindle location 517), missif (l. 865), debouch (l. 959), quinquiremes (l. 1373), equites (l. 2406), suffete (used first at l. 2407 but not explained until l. 3962), berms (l. 2617), impertum (l. 2657, no adequate definition available online for this usage), and grisaille (l. 3470).

When those nice publishers send me and others like me a free electronic copy of books, they often tell us NOT to mention errors of spelling, punctuation, and so forth. The publishers say they will be dealt with before publication. OK, but please indulge me when I point out that the author, who has written a good book and also seems to lead a completely cool and enviable life (try Googling him), has twice (l. 1200 and 1221), in a portion of the book sub-headed “A Grim Object Lesson”, referred to “abject lessons”, which is just wrong. This may be a “damn-you-autocorrect” sort of mistake, but it's also not a mistake an electronic spell-checker will catch. You need a human being. Do you have one? If so, my apologies for hectoring you needlessly.

Thanks to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for a free electronic advance review copy of this book.

A very interesting book on someone, who like most people I know of but in reality outside of elephants, Alps and Romans, know very little of any substance.

The book is a very easy read and bounds along at a good pace, rarely if ever getting bogged down. The focus is on Hannibal's confrontations with the Romans and it is fascinating to read the ebb and flow of the war and to appreciate how long Hannibal was able to roam around Italy causing the Romans problems.

Knowingly little of Hannibal, I cannot comment on the veracity of the information and appreciate that the amount of primary source material is extremely limited and therefore a lot of conjecture both from the author and his other sources is likely required.

Whilst another editorial run through would not go amiss, and I am sure there are more in-depth books on Hannibal out there, I would thoroughly recommend this book to someone like me who knows very little about him and the history of the time.

I received a free Kindle copy of Hannibal by Patrick N. Hunt courtesy of Net Galley and Simon & Schuster, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review to Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and my history book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google Plus pages.

I requested this book as I heard a great deal about Hannibal Barca and saw the movie from several years ago, but had not really read anything about him. It is the first book by Patrick N. Hunt that I have read.

This book is well researched and written. My limited exposure to Hannibal revolved around his getting battle Elephants over the Alps and into Italy as part of invasion. As it turns out, this was a great achievement, but the elephants did not really play that big a role in the subsequent years and battles.

Hannibal was a great military strategist who continually won battles against superior numbers, but over a period of years the lack of support from his home country eventually led to his downfall. After semi-retiring, he ended up taking his own life instead of being arrested and put on trial as a result of Romans seeking revenge. The author does a good job of presenting the facts in chronological order and with great detail. 

I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in learning more about Hannibal Barca.

Hannibal was the first general to defeat the forces of Rome, and Hunt is the man qualified to tell us about it. I read my copy free and early thanks to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster. This book becomes available to the public July 11, 2017.

Early history has never been my area of concentration, but since retirement, I push myself out of my usual comfort zone, often to excellent result. This time it proved to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Hunt is unquestionably qualified to discuss this topic. He is an historian of renown and has dedicated years to the study of Hannibal, even embarking on an expedition across the Alps in order to see what Hannibal experienced—or the closest proximity to it in modern times. On the other hand, I confess I was in it for two things: military strategy and history, which does interest me, and of course, the elephants.

Imagine riding into battle on the back of an elephant. Not only is an elephant massive, it is also impervious to most of the weaponry available at this time. Spears and javelins would just bounce off its hide. War elephants had their tusks sharpened, and being charged by such a force had to be terrifying. And in reading this history it occurred to me that Hannibal’s men would have been bemused indeed if they had known that elephants would be regarded by many of us, in future days, with great sentimentality. They would never have believed the elephant might become endangered. Who could kill elephants? But these are my musings, not Hunt’s.

Hunt is meticulous in demonstrating what Hannibal did and why he did it. He starts with his family background, in particular that he was the son of the great general Hamilcar, who took him to a temple, made him stand at the altar where the live sacrifice had been made, and swear lifelong hatred of Rome, whose government and military made war against Carthage and caused a lot of suffering. Hunt carefully separates what actually happened, from what probably happened, from what maybe happened, but the speculative language—may have, would have, almost certainly—slows me down, because each time the narrative picks up and I immerse myself in the text, I see the modifiers and draw back. I go back and reread in order to find out what is actually known, mentally removing all of the guesses and educated guesses, and then I am left with what is known. And although I appreciate that there are not vast treasure-troves of primary documents sitting around for Hunt to access, given the antiquity of the subject, I wish there were some way to read only the known facts. At the 70% mark I became frustrated and bailed.

Hunt quotes often from Livy and Polybius, both of whom I read many years ago as an undergraduate, and which still grace my shelves. My initial impression was that it might be more useful to go dig up those books, reread them, and give this one a miss. However, what Hunt does is sift through their information and provide an analysis that is deeper and more objective than theirs. Livy was, after all, a Roman; he is renowned as a scholar, but not necessarily objective.

And so those that have a serious interest in the history of Northern Africa and/or Southern Europe, or an interest in military history, can count this as a strong title to add to their historical libraries. To put it another way, what it lacks in terms of easy flowing narrative, it makes up for in accuracy and analysis.

Recommended to those that have a serious interest in world history or military history.

Barca not Lecter. 56 years ago, I was in high school Latin class. Along with the language came a dose of history. One mention was of Hannibal, who crossed the Alps with a herd of elephants and his army to invade Italy. Much more was made of the powerful Roman armies in these classes, their conquests, their victories. This book provides a fascinating account of Hannibal Barca, from Carthage, who did indeed invade Italy. As I had an advanced copy there were a few editorial slips but nothing to detract from the account. I was impressed by the tactics of Hannibal. Apparently so were the Romans, for after Hannibal decimated their armies, killing tens of thousands in battle, the Romans began to copy his strategy. At that point, the Romans began to win some decisive battles. This is not a war story, although the chronology provides for a rich historical accounting of the Barca family, including Hannibal’s father and brothers, their conquest of Spain with the riches of the silver mines on the Iberian Peninsula, the thinking and reason behind Hannibal’s decision to invade Italy. Details of the Punic wars are outlined, the cause and the casualties. Small wonder that many noted Generals from recent history study Hannibal’s tactics. Even to this very day he is studied by our nation’s top military leaders, and no doubt other nations’ militaries. This is not a book for a casual reading experience, but rather a comprehensive outline of perhaps one of the greatest military leaders of all time, certainly in the same category as Alexander the Great or Genghis Kahn, and others come to mind. The book is full of strange places, though they exist today by different names. An abundance of unfamiliar individual names and even tribes from the time. Celtiberian was a new (to me) group of people, as just one example. I think at times the book was overly detailed with the numerous Roman names becoming a mental jumble. I can’t speak for everyone with an interest in this type of history, but I consider this book a gem presenting a wealth of knowledge. Considering the lack of written and recorded documents the research put into and the resultant book is in my opinion outstanding, and easily a five-star historical tome.

The thing about biographies of people in ancient times is that unless it's a translation (thus second-hand) anything we read now is going to be third, maybe fourth-hand, if the ancient source is relying on other sources. With that as a given, I still think it worthwhile to read books such as Hunt's since I don't know Greek or Latin.

It's especially worthwhile when the author, as Hunt does, tries to find all the sources, comparing and contrasting them, and also travels to the various sites to give a first-hand account of the terrain.

So here's Hannibal Barca, who is still a somewhat mysterious figure, as he left no writings behind. From an early age, it appears he was meant to be a soldier. His father was involved in government, and took Hannibal along when he was sent to Iberia (Spain) to manage Carthage's silver mines in order to send the heavy tribute Rome required at the end of the First Punic War.

Hunt scrupulously (though cumulatively it can get tiresome) casts pretty much everything about Hannibal's early life in the conditional. "He might have observed . . ." "He would have seen . . ."

But once Hannibal's life catches up with his two main biographers (both Roman), Polybius and Livy, Hunt shifts into reportage mode.

The book is highly readable, as Hunt does his best to present the figures in Hannibal's life with as much individual characteristic as can be gleaned from ancient sources. He paints in terrain, seasons, and the difficulties of supply and logistics.

The brief outline of Hannibal's life is fairly well known: he was a Carthaginian who marched from Spain over the Alps with war elephants (the heavy tank of the time) into Italy to take on Rome, and not just won but utterly smashed the powerful Romans in battle on their own turf. After ten years he went back home when Rome attacked behind Hannibal. He lost, lived for a while as a politician organizing Carthage so as to pay the new stiff tribute Rome demanded, and finally had to leave Carthage altogether when he became too unpopular. Betrayed by a supposedly friendly king, he took the poison he always carried with him and died rather than be marched in manacles to Rome.

Hunt does a good job with the parallels with Scipio Africanus, who defeated him, after surviving the slaughter at Cannae. The two commanders met twice, and seem to have respected one another. Before that last battle at Zama, Scipio let Hannibal's spies come and inspect his preparations, and both commanders knew that Hannibal was unlikely to win.

Ironically, Scipio used his influence to get Rome to leave Hannibal alone toward the end of the latter's life, as he was strong enough to keep Carthage stable (and sending that tribute) but after Scipio himself found himself on the outs with Rome, he no longer could keep Rome from going after Hannibal. The two great commanders lost influence around the same time, and died the same year.

Hannibal's "legacy" is difficult to evaluate, as Hunt shows. The man was a brilliant leader, who inspired great loyalty as he led his men himself, slept on the ground with them, and of course put together winning battle plans--but at horrible cost, not just to their enemies, but to themselves.

The famous Alp crossing killed over half of Hannibal's army. Another swamp crossing in Italy killed a lot more. The Roman death toll at the battle at Cannae, according to Hunt, accounted for 20% of all Roman males between the ages of fifteen and fifty. And for what? Hannibal kept on the move the entire time he was in Italy, so these battles ended up gaining nothing; the Romans learned to turn his tactics against him, and instituted a successful war of attrition as they chased him around and around, avoiding confrontation.

And yet his strategic and especially his tactical innovation has inspired war leaders for centuries. I guess it's safe to say as long as humans insist on having wars, Hannibal will be an important figure. He did inspire loyalty, and his original motivation was to strike back at Rome for the misery and slaughter perpetrated on Carthage after the First Punic War, but he contributed nothing to beauty or to our long, difficult road toward civilization. The material legacy is uncountable bones of men who died far from home.

I wanted to love this book. Instead, I liked it. Patrick N. Hunt is extremely knowledgeable and his expertise shines through. There were moments that were brilliant, particularly early on in the chapters about Hannibal's youth and crossing the Alps. He also did an excellent job illustrating the scope of the violence between Hannibal and the Romans.
Where I had a more difficult time was with the long period of time after his initial victory. The narrative flow was not as intense. The book picked up again for me once Hannibal was called back to Carthage.
The breadth of sources that Patrick N. Hunt used were well documented in the end notes and bibliography. I appreciate that there was no skimping on source documentation in a book that is geared for the general public.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about Ancient history.

Book: Hannibal
Author: Patrick N. Hunt
Rating: 4 Out of 5 Stars

I would like to thank Netgalley and Simon Schuster for providing me with this galley in exchange for an honest review.

As many of you know, I love ancient and medieval history. When I saw this book on Netgalley, I decided to give it a try. I had never heard of Patrick Hunt until now and I must say that I found his writing enjoyable. This is a nonfiction book, but it is really easy to read and is not at all written in a textbook style. I know a number of you just read fiction, but this does not read like your normal nonfiction. The writing style is not at all dry and is full of emotion and power.

I feel that people who are not familiar with Hannibal's story will be able to dive right in. We get to see the true legacy of Hannibal come to life on these pages. This book starts out when Hannibal is very young and follows him right up until his death. We get to read about some of the greatest military campaigns to ever exist on earth and we get to experience and understand why Hannibal wanted to bring Rome to its knees. There are not a lot of people who Rome was afraid of; after reading this book, it is very clear as to why Rome was so afraid of him.

The facts are really well done here. Everything is laid out in a manner that makes sense. There is really no sources that aren't creditable nor is there the normal "beat around the bush" that so many other books on ancient and medieval history seem to have. It's very clear that Patrick did his homework before writing this book. In the end, we have a very solid and well crafted book.

To be honest, this was just a well crafted book. The language is perfect for the everyday reader, while Hannibal just comes to life. I think that fans of Dan Jones will enjoy this book. It's a must read to anyone who is interested in Hannibal!

This book will be available July 11, 2017.

There is so much to say about a book with this much material behind it. Simply put: a must read for history buffs.

When I say "I'm reading a book about Hannibal," my students all say, "Hannibal Lecter?" For me, Patrick Hunt's biography of Hannibal Barcid--tactician and general extraordinaire, is way better that the story of Hannibal Lecter (although if one has seen the movie, one understands how a propos the character's name is).

Hunt's extensive research into all the elements that made Hannibal a successful general and an unwitting teacher to his Roman opponents brings life to the story.