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This book gets a few ratings of ‘biography’, and… yes, actually, this is a fairly decent biography of Fernão de Magalhães, or Ferdinand Magellan, as it goes into his background and life as a whole. However, it is primarily about the Armada de Molucca and the circumnavigation of the world.

As a biography, it is more of a tragedy, as Magellan, a determined and ambitious man, is repeatedly snubbed by the King of Portugal, and Magellan goes to Spain with his plan to go west to get to the East. However, he is never truly trusted by the powers that be, and his authority over his five-ship fleet critically undermined before it even leaves port. Worse, Magellan himself doesn’t seem to have been a great leader, never developing a large degree of trust with most of his subordinates.

But he can rise to the occasion in a crisis. After losing two ships to a mutiny, with the other two standing off neutral, he manages to reassert authority over four ships with just the resources of the crew on his flagship. But outside of crisis, his performance can be erratic, and this shows in the very inconsistent dealings with the natives of the Philippines, where he puts himself into a hopeless situation and gets killed.

The coverage of the rest of the voyage is no less detailed than that of the first half, as Bergreen has collated as many primary sources as he could to assemble the full story of the first journey around the world. This mostly means two surviving accounts written during the voyage, but there are of course other accounts from crew members written afterward. Some of these have never appeared in English, and Bergreen introduces them for the first time in English here. He also occasionally makes use of later sources for descriptions of what an area they went through was like.

Despite this attention to detail, this is still a ‘popular’ account of the expedition, and extremely readable. Sadly, as such, it is deficient in maps. In fact, there’s no maps showing the details of his route at all. There is a good section of plates, but in the Kindle edition this is unhelpfully stuck behind the index, and I had no idea it existed until I started flipping through the end to check for maps.

As of February, 1775, Massachusetts was declared to be in a state of rebellion to the British government. Just under a year and a half later, the Thirteen Colonies jointly declared themselves independent.

This was an event that was by no means obvious or considered likely in February 1775, and John Ferling takes a deep dive into the political process that led to the Declaration of Independence in his book. It is fairly focused, keeping all the attention on the activities of the two Continental Congresses. That’s still more than enough people to be impossible to get an entire cast of characters. But he does bring in all the prominent people on both sides of the argument, and mentions the fates of many of the signers at the end.

Naturally, one of the main themes is just how events propelled Congress from a solidly reconciliationist stand (that is, most everyone just wanted this over—on their terms) to being convinced that Great Britain would never give them what was desired, and that staying in the empire would be more harmful than enjoying its trade and protection (notably from other European powers).

The book moves well, and while it often felt like to me that there was no clear picture, that is the problem with trying to trace the separate thoughts of a good number of people. Subjects are tackled in a largely chronological framework, which is essential as Ferling is trying to show the shift in opinion. The main shortcoming I see is there’s lots of attention on the extremes (those, like the Adamses who felt independence was essential from early on, or before the Revolution—and showing just where this conviction came from would have been nice, but presumably impossible—and those who steadfastly supported reconciliation), but not so much on those who truly changed their minds.

There is a good look at the apparent shift in public mood, and the political revolution that followed Congress’ advice to the colonies to move away from the pre-war colonial charters. This did a lot to shift the political climate in the state legislatures, and prompted a change in instructions to the delegates to Congress to allow for independence. I could wish for a bit more on some of those politics, though Pennsylvania’s internal struggles (the most bitter) are talked about.

Naturally, he spends some time time time on the Declaration itself, as well as the drafting of it, and the voting to adopt it. He spends a little less time on the first paragraph (which he dismisses as ‘usually forgotten’, but I remember from school) than I’d like, but of course talks about the sources for the main part of the second paragraph (which is what it largely remembered and referred to today), and gives a nice accounting of the various charges leveled at George III in it, without rehashing what is today generally a tedious list of general complaints, and talks about what they generally referred to.

I had actually picked this up a few years ago, but reading it right after Atkinson’s The British Are Coming was a good pairing as each is focused on what the other largely avoids, across much the same time period.

The Romans are not generally known for a well-developed cavalry arm, but here, like everywhere else, they looked at what worked for everyone else, and borrowed or imitated what they liked.

The second volume is still not out (nearly two years after this one), but I will assume it will cover the period where heavy cavalry is better known, while this is really more about early Roman heavy units. It starts with 1st Century references in Josephus and elsewhere, and of course deals with the Notitia Dignitatum unit list. Along with this, there’s a good section on ‘cataphract’ and ‘clibanari’, and how those terms are used in the sources, and the debate on what exactly was meant by having two different terms.

The overall production level of the book is stellar. This is a full-color book all the way through, bringing out subtleties even in technically monochromatic artifacts (such as carved stellae). The photography is similarly very good, and shows these artifacts to best effect, giving a good idea of the actual object (well, the ones that are not just fragments, there’s some art detailing a reconstructed helmet, and more like that would be good).

Unfortunately, the traditional color art plates of an Elite title are merely workmanlike. The compositions are all fairly static figures not interacting with each other, putting back into a slightly improved version of 1970’s military art. The backgrounds range from decent short-distance landscape that give a little feel to environment, all the way down to a meaningless ‘DMV backdrop’ (seen on the cover).

Finally, there’s some discussion of the organization of these units, and the tactics they employed. An interesting conjecture is that there’s no early sources for their organization, because until about the 3rd Century, these units were probably fully employed by pulling non-Romans in, who were left to their own methods of organization. (Effectively making them all auxilia.)

It is of course a bit specialized as a book, and it does seem like the subject fits well into the standard format. The photographs are plentiful, which breaks up the text some, but means its even better visual reference than usual.

The Greco-Persian Wars are famous thanks to some very good accounts written not long after they happened (primarily The Histories), but still get boiled down to a few famous battles. The Battle of Plataea isn’t one of those, and feels more like a denouement after the drama of Salamis.

However, the Persan Empire still had a very large army that wintered over in Greece after Salamis. Much of the army pulled back with Xerxes, but what was left was still larger than what the Greeks could likely put up against it. The next year would see the Persians finish by land what they had started by land, and been delayed by sea.

Osprey has done Campaign books for all the major battles of the two invasions of Greece, though I only have this one and Marathon (which was good). This one is meant to stand alone, and starts with an eleven-page summary of the rise of Persia and its conflicts with Greece. This is followed by the usual short descriptions of the various commanders involved (very short in this case, ~3 pages for five people). There is a good look at the Persian and Greek armies, with the general equipment of both, and some analysis of the likely number of men in each army. The following section on overall planning is fairly brief, but covers the situation well.

The main narrative starts with the Persian withdrawal after Salamis (noting that the Greeks had expected a ’round two’ the next day), and deals well with all the politicking that surrounded the efforts to keep the Greek army in the field, and decide just where it would be stationed. The main bulk of the battle is well described, and there’s a couple of good ‘soldier’s eye’ view illustrations, but of course, it largely follows Herodotus’ account. There is some good analysis over how the Greek supplies were working, and the Persian attempts to cut that off; this is also followed by some good work on just what happened during the attempted pull out and the climatic day of the battle.

There’s also a very short section on the Battle of Mycale, which supposedly happened on the same day. The Histories doesn’t talk as much about it, and therefore there’s not a lot to say here, though there is an area map, and a good photo of where the battle presumably happened.

Overall, it’s a competent Campaign book, but not a stellar one. This is mostly caused by the fact we’re dependent on one well-known source. It’s well analyzed here, but there’s not a whole lot to do, though of course the photos of the area, and the maps are a great help.