The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme

The Face of Battle is undoubtedly the most influential book of its kind. Keegan takes military history out of the ghetto and into the mainstream of 20th century research by asking what it was like to participate in three representative battles: Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme. Keegan delves into the visual, aural, and olfactory terror of the battlefield, asking what it is that makes soldiers stand and fight, kill other men, and be killed themselves. As a scholarly monograph, it is a delight, dry and witty in a particularly British way. War is terrible, but Keegan loves it and shares his love in this great book.