_Men in Arms_ represents a unique work--in just under 400 pages of text, the authors have managed to produce a work which presents the reader or student with a fine overview of warfare from the Ancient Greeks to the advent of operations other than war in the late-1980s/early 1990s.

Naturally, in attempting to cover a subject so broad in such a relatively small amount of space, there are bound to be those who find fault with the work as it cannot hope to cover each of the periods in particularly great detail. To bemoan these shortcomings would be to lose sight of the book's intrinsic value to beginning students of warfare, as well as those endeavoring to study an unfamiliar period.

The division of the book into 22 logically divided chapters aids in this type of use, providing the reader with an understanding of the essential elements of war through the ages and its attendant effect on Western society as a whole. _Men in Arms_ is an excellent introductory text and--though the absence of footnotes was sorely felt by this reviewer--the bibliography, which is divided into subject areas by chronological sequence, will point the interested reader in the direction of other, more detailed texts.