Acquire Hannibal: The Military Biography Of Rome's Greatest Enemy Written By Richard A. Gabriel Readable In Version

genuinely enjoyable book. Not too onesided which is unusual in biographies, In fact the author is extremely critical of Hannibal at times, especially his inability to push home his advantage and attack Rome when it lay open to assault, Given that most of the information comes from fairly biased Roman sources the author does a good job of sifting through the information and making valid points, This volume is an excellent examination of the Carthaginian general, and genius Hannibal Barca, Richard A. Gabriel is thorough in his assessment, referencing his statements extensively to both primary ancient sources and secondary contemporary researchers, It provides insight into Hannibal's childhood, his family, father and his Italian campaign,

An excellent overview of the life of an extraordinary man,

A superb book that describes Hannibal in great detail, who won all his battles except the next to last, Zama, and his last as a navel commander for King Prusias of Bithynia Hannibal was a field commander, not a navel commander and lost the war with Rome.
Why does the adage "He who wins the battles, wins the war," not work for Hannibal in the Carthaginians Second Punic War against Rome

On page: "Hannibal failed because his operational victories did not achieve his strategic objectives.
After Cannae, the strategic ground shifted beneath his feet, reducing a man who had once been the king of the battlefield to little more than a sacrificial pawn in a much larger game that he never really understood.
"

Also important is a footnote to Chapter, "Why Hannibal Failed," from the text page, footnoteon pagein the text: "My old friend and colleague the late Col, Harry Summers used to tell the story of his assignment to the negotiations in Hanoi between the North Vietnamese and the Americans in an effort to end the war, In a conversation with a North Vietnamese colonel, Summers remarked, 'Well, whatever the outcome, you never defeated us on the battlefield, ' The North Vietnamese colonel smiled and said, 'That is true, But it is also irrelevant!'"

And so it was with Hannibal against the Romans, until the end at Zama and Scipio Africanus,

A brilliant must read, if you're into history! Poor argumentation, sloppy scholarship, contradictory research, and an overall confusing and jumbled final product, There are so many other better books out there don't waste your time with this one, Richard Gabriel has written a very useful, and more detailed than most, military history of one of the greatest commanders of antiquity: Hannibal Barca,
Detailing the structure of Carthaginian society and how this impacted their structuring of their armed forces, and the role of the Barcid family in reforming and leading the impetus of Carthaginian military doctrine, Gabriel lays a firm foundation for the narrative that follows.

While the book covers well trodden ground, it is still relevatory and deeply insightful,
Following the loss of territory in Sicily, and the Roman seizure of Corsica and Sardinia following the end of the First Punic War, Carthage turned to the

Iberian peninsula to expand it's resource pool and it's strategic depth.
It was in the fighting against the various tribes and alliances in Iberia where Hannibal had his first tastes of commanding troops in the field, The Spanish were excellent fighters and Hannibal felt no hesitation in absorbing them into the Carthaginian armed forces structure, In his invasion of Italy, Spanish troops would be one of the main components of his war machine, He even married a Spanish tribal princess to further cement alliances with Iberian tribes and Carthage,
Gabriel does a very good job of detailing and analyzing the very familiar story of Hannibal's initial invasion,
The Battles of the Ticinus River, Trebia, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae, all well known in military history circles, is bolstered by a refreshing detailing of Hannibal's war in Italy following his triumph at Cannae.

Most military histories even Goldsworthy's either gloss over, or entirely ignore the war in Italy post Cannae, While true, despite his amazing triumph in destroying a,man Roman army at Cannae, the Romans turned around and forced Hannibal into a strategic irrelevancy, Gabriel shows the reader as to how and why this was done.
Something the vast majority of studies on Hannibal, and the Second Punic War, fail at,
Hannibal's return to Tunisia, to face Scipio at Zama is the most detailed engagement of the book, and Gabriel shows how much of a mess, for both commanders, that battle truly was.
Gabriel then writes a very good chapter analyzing why Hannibal ultimately failed, His assertion that it was Hannibal's cultural Hellenism Carthage was not native to Africa, but a colony of Phoenician merchants native to Tyre, in modern day Lebanon, and who had close cultural ties to the Greeks and the Hellenic Empires is not exactly a new assertion.
While it has been made before, Gabriel does a better job than most of the others in detailing how Hannibal's Hellenistic mindset when conducting warfare, failed utterly to take into account the Roman cultural doctrine of total warfare.

Hannibal, seeking to defeat Romenot to conquer it as too many have in the past asserted, was predicated upon winning a series of stunning tactical successes to force the Roman Senate to the negotiating tables.

Roman doctrine was one of strategic endurance, Individual tactical and operational failures were secondary to ultimate strategic success, and Rome eschewed negotiations in favor of attrition, and total mobilization and total modes of warfare, In fact, this is the birth of the modern Western methodology of warfare,

Overall, there were very few errors or typos, all of which can ve attributed to the all too common malaise of sloppy editing and poor proofing that plagues most publishing houses now a days.

This is an excellent book, and my literary introduction to Mr, Gabriel. I was familiar with him as a young man when the History Channel aired the somewhat awful show: Battles BC, where Gabriel was one of the three main talking heads.

After reading this work on Hannibal, I plan to seek out more of his work,
Highly recommended. Very dry reading. Way too much info about logistics and too little about the actual battles, It felt likeon logistics and quantities of equipment on onlydedicated to the actual battles, More maps would have helped, Even the famous crossing of the Alps was covered in short order, Hannibal was famous for using elephants, yet the author gives very little info about how they were utilized in battle, I found the first/of this book to be exceptionally dry and I very much had trouble getting through it, It reads just like a text book and can become dry and repetitive often, The books saving grace is when it FINALLY starts to describe the actual combat in Italy, This book is an informational and interesting read on one of the most fascinating characters of the ancient world, The author goes into tremendous detail on the main troops of each side, describing their weapons and equipment well, He also covers the background to Hannibal's life and campaigns thoroughly, and explains the differences in thinking between his Hellenistic mindset and the Romans' more severe, moralistic one, The book also gives great insight into the few original sources that we have from the ancient world, and both criticises their inaccuracies, and commends their facts, I would have liked more of an epilogue, perhaps placing Hannibal against the pantheon of his contemporaries and rivals, For that, and the fact that I am automatically biased when it comes to books about Hannibal, I can only rate thisout of, Intelligent and worthy account of Hannibals Italian campaign

If one begins ones reading of this intelligent and worthy account of Hannibals Italian campaign, begin with the last chapter before the Epilogue as it lays out the whole book succinctly.
Well written and organized, it allows new perspective from other books I have read on Hannibal, For example, after Cannae, Carthage interest in Hannibals Italian mission, It became a diversionary mission to keep Roman troops devoted close to Italy so Carthage could devote its primary strategy to capturing and maintaining its domains in Spain, North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica.
Hannibal seemed to become like the American WWII General Patton, Hannibals failure to invade Rome twice was due to his Hellinistic mindset that by building up enough battle victories against the Romans he could bring them to the peace table.
It was also due a misunderstanding to the Roman mindset that they never went to a peace settlement until they were the victor, Points that other books have not made clearly that the war was not military, but political, Gabriel provides a sound commentary for our study and appreciation, The Romans destruction of Carthage after the Third Punic War erased any Carthaginian historical record of Hannibals life, What we know of him comes exclusively from Roman historians who had every interest in minimizing his success, exaggerating his failures, and disparaging his character, The charges leveled against Hannibal include greed, cruelty and atrocity, sexual indulgence, and even cannibalism, But even these sources were forced to grudgingly admit to Hannibals military genius, if only to make their eventual victory over him appear greater,

Yet there is no doubt that Hannibal was the greatest Carthaginian general of the Second Punic War, When he did not defeat them outright, he fought to a standstill the best generals Rome produced, and he sustained his army in the field for sixteen long years without mutiny or desertion.
Hannibal was a firstrate tactician, only a somewhat lesser strategist, and the greatest enemy Rome ever faced, When he at last met defeat at the hands of the Roman general Scipio, it was against an experienced officer who had to strengthen and reconfigure the Roman legion and invent mobile tactics in order to succeed.
Even so, Scipios victory at Zama was against an army that was a shadow of its former self, The battle could easily have gone the other way, If it had, the history of the West would have been changed in ways that can only be imagined, Richard A. Gabriels brilliant new biography shows how Hannibals genius nearly unseated the Roman Empire, .