Ancient Battle Formations is a unique history book. Most books based on history usually focus on a historical personality or specific battle/time period. Having watched many war movies and played many war games (like AOE and Total War), I was always curious about how battle formations worked in real life and Ancient Battle Formations provides you a glimpse of the technical aspects of a battle.

From battle formations of heavy and light infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots to going deep in the subject to disclose the strategy behind how troops are arranged, how they strike, how a single soldier fights in a formation (ably supported by others) and how one unit is countered by another, this book is a in-depth look at the strategies employed in an ancient battle.

The rest of the book focuses on infantry units that reigned supreme in this era: Greek hoplite phalanx, Macedonian pike phalanx and the Roman triplex acies

.The book uses several Greek and Latin sources shedding new light on how these formations where reported used in famous battles.Having said that the book does get too technical at times and without visual data, it's difficult to digest all the facts.

Overall, This book is an unique history book focusing on ancient battles and battle formations and recommended to anyone interested in historical warfare.

Many thanks to the publishers Pen & Sword and Netgalley for the ARC.

Being a war gamer and casual student of strategy and tactics, I was really looking forward to reading this book. The first half of the book dives into the phalanx formations with a significant amount of historical exegesis combined with a fair amount of practical examination of the science/rationale behind them. The author inserts numerous references to historical descriptions of how these formations where reported used in famous battles to support his various hypotheses. While I had a good working knowledge of the over-all battle field strategies from this time period, I was a little fuzzy of the how the individual within the formation actually contributed to the battle. This book pretty much covers this in exhausting detail ... I must admit that I did not completely understand why these formations were so consistant before ... however, at times I still found myself skimming the detailed battle descriptions. One new detail that I learned was how the shield design facilitates or impedes a shield push before. Unfortunately we don't get the same detail for the non-Infantry formations (chariots and cavalry), either because the book is already big enough or because we don't have enough information to fully examine or compare various hypotheses.

This book is a solid, if somewhat narrow, reference book and highly recommended for anyone interested in historical warfare.

I was given this free advance reader copy (ARC) ebook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.
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