The Greatest War Stories Never Told

The Greatest War Stories Never Told: 100 Tales from military history to astonish, bewilder, and stupefy, Rick Beyer, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2005


Beyer works for the History Channel and has access to great stories. In The Greatest War Stories Never Told he tells some of the most unusual...how war led to the invention of silly putty, experiments to have pigeons guide missiles, how a tank was designed several hundred years before they made it to a battlefield, how a prostitute affected the rulership of the Byzantine Empire, how a unit fought both on both sides of the Civil War and more.

The stories are short. They have the advantage of the reader being able to take in several at any given time. They also have applicable pictures and little blurbs alongside them to make them more entertaining.

The downside is that I was already familiar with virtually every story found within. The book would be a shock and surprise to people who have not read a lot of history...but that is precisely the audience that probably would not read the book.

Still, Beyer writes well, working a lot of information into just a few paragraphs and dispensing information that might interest the reader in exploring deeper into the world of history...and that can only be a good thing.