First Edition

Liddell Hart

No DJ

Good condition (see photos)

Table of Contents (see photo)

Binding is tight

No foxing (other than a little on the cover page) (see photo)

A piece of a bookplate on the free end page (see photo)

Back free end page looks like it had pencil markings that were erased (see photo)

pp. 199

Dimensions: 8 1/4" x 5 1/4" x 3/4"

Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart (31 October 1895 – 29 January 1970), commonly known throughout most of his career as Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, was a British soldier, military historian, and military theorist. He wrote a series of military histories that proved influential among strategists. Arguing that frontal assault was bound to fail at great cost in lives, as proven in World War I, he recommended the "indirect approach" and reliance on fast-moving armoured formations. Wikipedia

Liddel-Hart was trying to shock the military establishment into an honest appraisal of the First World War failures, because he was witness to what had happened by misapplication of historical "lessons learned". He is unrepentantly critical of both Napoleon and Major General Carl von Clausewitz to prove a point that the real lesson to be learned is that adaptability to new tactics and technologies is the key to success and that original, imaginative thought is required to apply these tools. He encourages students of war at all levels to learn not just military history, but to understand battles and war in the context of social, political, and economic events.

In The Ghost Of Napoleon, Liddell Hart concentrates on two of these intellections, each of which vitally affected the course of history in the last two centuries. One was responsible for the triumphs of Revolutionary France and for Napoleon's empire; the other, for that ruinous conflict called WW I.