This succinct retelling of the Battle of Waterloo is a welcome addition to the over 100 titles available concerning this crucial moment in history. Roberts (Napoleon & Wellington) has created as objective an account as possible considering the various national prides of the combatants affected by the outcome of the battle. He opens with an overview of the Waterloo campaign, beginning with the Congress of Vienna, and then presents the battle itself in five phases, following the day by the clock. The narrative is interspersed with participants' accounts and the author's description of the ground as it appeared then and now, which gives the reader an excellent perspective. Three important appendixes offer new information about the event: Maj. Robert Dicks's letter from Brussels before the battle, French captain Fortune Bracks's 1835 letter giving a possible reason for the disastrous French cavalry attack, and Wellington's Waterloo dispatch. Recommended.-David Lee Poremba, Detroit P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A deceptively slender, richly nuanced overview of the battle that, suggests British historian Roberts (Napoleon and Wellington, 2002, etc.), marks the beginning of the modern era. Though it took place well into the 19th century, Waterloo "was nonetheless an eighteenth-century phenomenon," Roberts writes--and not only in its deployment of brilliantly outfitted men in straight, easy-to-mow-down lines across wide fields of fire. It was resolutely modern, though, in its scale: Waterloo involved perhaps half a million soldiers distributed among the armies of France, England, Prussia, and lesser principalities and territories, and Napoleon Bonaparte seems to have nursed a born revolutionist's hope that victory against his enemies would inspire the Belgians to rise against the Dutch, the French to resume control of Europe, and the Tory government of England to collapse. A reasonable desire, perhaps, but in attempting to realize it Napoleon made some curious and even "strategically inept" errors that betrayed some of his carefully pronounced principles, dividing his forces and allowing the enemy to gain control of the high ground; "the topography across which Wellington had chosen to receive Napoleon's attacks could hardly have been better suited for infantry" against advancing artillery, cavalry, and ground forces, Roberts notes. Wellington made a few miscalculations himself. But, like Napoleon, and far from placing himself at a safe distance as some historians have maintained, Wellington was everywhere at once, keeping careful control over his side of the battle. The battle, Roberts insists, was never a foregone conclusion, and it could have turned decisively for Napoleon at many points; even in failure, had he withdrawn just a bit earlier, Napoleon might have saved some of his army and with it resisted an invasion of France itself. But he didn't, and the carnage was fearful: taken together with satellite battles and skirmishes, Waterloo cost the lives of 120,300 men, a staggering figure that only raised the bar for subsequent slaughters. A vivid, thoughtful, and blessedly concise account of one of history's signal events. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

This summary narrative supplies basic data about Waterloo and evaluates mistakes by both Wellington and Napoleon that make the historic battle one of the most worked-over topics for speculation in military history. A Saturday Night Live skit once parodied the phenomenon by wondering, What if Napoleon had a B-52 at the Battle of Waterloo? Roberts' original contribution to historical contingency--for such an exhaustively studied battle, his research, amazingly enough, turned up new evidence--is that a cavalry charge by Marshal Ney, possibly the gravest error the French made during the battle, was a spontaneous assault rather than an intended one. Smoothly integrating the what-ifs into the chronology, Roberts joins the essential facts about Waterloo, such as its area and relief, to the morale of individual units involved. Emphasizing the courage and fear that rippled over the battlefield during its daylong course, Roberts instills an appreciation for Waterloo as a horrific experience saturated with alternative possible outcomes. A must for the military shelf. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2005 Booklist