This collection is principally concerned with American and British conflicts with occasional forays into foreign armies - notably the Greeks, the Romans, and Napoleon's soldiers. Hastings has sought stories which illustrate the military condition through the ages, both on the battlefield and in the barracks: comic, eccentric, heroic, tragic.

Includes index.

Bible -- Herodotus -- Xenophon -- Plutarch -- Livy -- Arrian -- Cornelius Nepos -- William Robson -- Florus -- Julius Caesar -- Suetonius -- Josephus -- Edward Gibbon -- Su-ma Ch'ien -- Sir Edward Creasey -- Procopius -- Geoffrey of Monmouth -- Notker the Stammerer -- Anglo-Saxon Chronicle -- Poem of the Cid -- Edith Simon -- Gabriel Ronay -- Ronald Finucane -- Steven Runciman -- Arthur Waley -- Sir John Froissart -- Barbara Tuchman -- Voltaire -- Geoffrey Trease -- Baronage of England -- Henrici Quinti Angliae Regis Gesta -- Christopher Hibbert -- Warkworth's Chronicle -- William H. Prescott -- Sir Fulke Greville -- Lord De Ros -- Sydman Poyntz -- Nehemiah Wharton -- C.V. Wedgwood -- William Waller -- Philip Warner -- John Aubrey -- Mark Bence-Jones -- G.N. Godwin -- Max Hastings -- John Buchan -- Oliver Cromwell -- Robert Massie -- Patrick Macrory -- Daniel Defoe -- Richard Steel -- Dr. Hare -- James Settle -- Matthew Bishop -- John Manchip White -- Nancy Mitford -- Earl Ligonier -- Rex Whitworth -- Lord De Ros -- Ludwig Reiners -- Francis Parkman -- Christopher Duffy -- Lieutenant Aubusey -- Robert Middlekauff -- John Chaney -- Alexander Lawrence -- Esmond Wright -- John Prebble -- Sergeant Ancell -- William Cobbett -- Thomas James Mathias -- Maurice Carpenter -- Hubert Cole -- James Settle -- Baron De Marbot -- General Thiebault -- John Blakiston -- A.G. MacDonell -- Robert Blakeney -- James Carrick Moore -- Sir Harry Smith -- Capt. T.W. Brotherton -- William Grattan -- Sir John Kincaid -- Raymond Horricks -- Private William Wheeler -- Elizabeth Longford -- Cavalier Mercer -- Lord Stanhope -- William Siborne -- Cecil Woodham-Smith -- Philip Mason -- Gen. John B. Gordon -- Frank Wilkeson -- Samual Carter III -- W.T. Sherman -- James Wellard -- Dee Brown -- Michael Howard -- Byron Farwell -- Winston S. Churchill -- Anthony Powell -- MacCarthy O'Moore -- Frank Richards -- Major H.R. Hadow -- John Masters -- Osbert Sitwell -- Alexis Wrangel -- Lt.-Col. Arthur Osburn -- Sir Edward Hulse -- J.F.C. Fuller -- Adrian Carton De Wiart -- Robert Graves -- Martin Middlebrook -- Ronald Lewin -- T.E. Lawrence -- A. Donovan Young -- Henry Williamson -- John Masters -- Hugh Thomas -- John Frost -- Ralph Arnold -- David Divine -- Eric Linklater -- James Lees Milne -- Sir James Marshall-Cornwall -- J.R. Henderson -- Bernard Fergusson -- Russell Braddon -- John Verney -- Guy Sajer -- Stephen Ambrose -- Sir John Wheeler-Bennett -- Manfred Rommel -- Douglas Sutherland -- Richard Meinzerhagen -- Nicholas Tomalin -- Chaim Hertzog.