Rindis.com

My biggest regret about Reed Browning’s book on the War of the Austrian Succession is that he never wrote any other military history. His normal subject seems to be the British government of the early 18th Century, which is probably a bit too detailed for my general tastes (and also, somewhat surprisingly, ’20s baseball).

But this volume is an excellent one-volume history of the war as a whole, concentrating on the military and diplomatic activities of the principle actors in Europe. The New World and India do get coverage, but it is at least as peripheral as the events would have seemed in Europe. For an overview that is more than fair, but the narrative for both theaters felt not fully formed. (Similarly, the ’45 Jacobite rebellion gets about a page, which is fair.)

The main event is more than complicated enough to need all the attention and focus that can be brought to bear. He starts with a good overview of the political conflicts that led to the outbreak of war, and presents the main theaters of the war. However, while the maps follow this outline well, they’re very primitive, and do not have any of the details needed for later in the book.