Martin L. Van Creveld

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About Martin L. Van Creveld

Martin van Creveld is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading experts on military history and strategy. He is the author of 27 books, which between them have been published in 20 languages. The best known one is The Transformation of War, which back in 1991 predicted the ongoing shift from large-scale conventional warfare to insurgency and terrorism.

In addition to military affairs, van Creveld has written extensively about political history (The Rise and Decline of the State), Israel history, American history, and women’s history.

He lives near Jerusalem with his wife, Dvora Lewy.

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Titles By Martin L. Van Creveld

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The Gender Dialogues Jan 20, 2021

by Martin van Creveld

( 4 )

$4.95

- In what ways are women privileged?- What are the main similarities between men and women? What are the main differences?- Who and what was Mary Wollstonecraft?- Who understands women better—women or men?- Why do so many men, including married men, visit prostitutes?- What is the Kama Sutra all about?- When will equality between men and women become real?- Is the future female?- Is feminism destroying Western civilization?- What is love?- What will a possible reaction to feminism look like?Based on twenty years’ study of these and similar questions, this book provides answers to them. Such as are succinct, always well thought-out, often provocative, and, from time to time, funny as well.Hooked? Get it today!

Other Formats: Paperback

This title and over 1 million more available with Kindle Unlimited.

Pussycats: Why The Rest Keeps Beating The Rest, And What Can Be Done About It Jun 6, 2016

by Martin van Creveld

( 67 )

$6.99

In the kingdom(s) of the West, something is rotten. Collectively, the countries of NATO are responsible for almost two thirds of global military spending. In terms of military technology, particularly electronics, communications and logistics, they have left the rest so far behind that it is no contest. Yet ever since the Korean War ended in 1953, almost every time they went abroad and fought non-Westerners they were defeated and had to withdraw. As happened, to cite but two recent cases, in Iraq and Afghanistan; and as may yet happen if and when Islamic terrorism spreads into Europe, as it is quite likely to do. What went wrong? How did the ferocious soldiers who, between 1492 and 1914, brought practically the entire world under their sway, become pussycats? The present study, unique of its kind, seeks to answer these questions. Chapter I, “Subduing the Young,” focuses on the way Western people raise their scanty offspring. Infantilizing them, depriving them of any kind of independence, and, in the words of a recent best-seller, turning them into “excellent sheep.” Chapter II, “Defanging the Troops,” shows how the same is happening in the military. Chapter III, “The War on Men,” examines the way in which the forces are being feminized affects, indeed infects, their fighting power. Chapter IV, “Constructing PTSD,” looks at the way returning soldiers are almost obliged to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Finally, chapter V outlines the emergence of modern societies which, exalting rights and forgetting about duty, have come very close to delegitimizing war itself. The book is about 73,000 words long. It is written in jargon-less language laymen can understand. It is also thoroughly documented. Readership should include anybody with an interest in national security, and then some.

Other Formats: Paperback

This title and over 1 million more available with Kindle Unlimited.

Command in War Jan 1, 1987

by Martin Van Creveld

( 22 )

$37.05

Many books have been written about strategy, tactics, and great commanders. This is the first book to deal exclusively with the nature of command itself, and to trace its development over two thousand years from ancient Greece to Vietnam. It treats historically the whole variety of problems involved in commanding armies, including staff organization and administration, communications methods and technologies, weaponry, and logistics. And it analyzes the relationship between these problems and military strategy.

In vivid descriptions of key battles and campaigns—among others, Napoleon at Jena, Moltke’s Königgrätz campaign, the Arab–Israeli war of 1973, and the Americans in Vietnam—Martin van Creveld focuses on the means of command and shows how those means worked in practice. He finds that technological advances such as the railroad, breech-loading rifles, the telegraph and later the radio, tanks, and helicopters all brought commanders not only new tactical possibilities but also new limitations.

Although vast changes have occurred in military thinking and technology, the one constant has been an endless search for certainty—certainty about the state and intentions of the enemy’s forces; certainty about the manifold factors that together constitute the environment in which war is fought, from the weather and terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and certainty about the state, intentions, and activities of one’s own forces. The book concludes that progress in command has usually been achieved less by employing more advanced technologies than by finding ways to transcend the limitations of existing ones.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

The Age of Airpower Apr 12, 2011

by Martin Van Creveld

( 19 )

$12.99

Airpower, more than any other factor, has shaped war in the twentieth century. In this fascinating narrative history, Martin van Creveld vividly portrays the rise of the plane as a tool of war and the evolution of both technology and strategy. He documents seminal battles and turning points, and relates stories of individual daring and collective mastery of the skies.

However, the end of airpower's glorious age is drawing near. The conventional wisdom to the contrary, modern precision guided munitions have not made fighter bombers more effective against many kinds of targets than their predecessors in World War II. U.S. ground troops calling for air support in Iraq in 2003 did not receive it any faster than Allied forces did in France in 1944. And from its origins on, airpower has never been very effective against terrorists, guerrillas, and insurgents. As the warfare waged by these kinds of people grow in importance, and as ballistic missiles, satellites, cruise missiles and drones increasingly take the place of quarter-billion-dollar manned combat aircraft and their multi-million-dollar pilots, airpower is losing utility almost day by day.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

The Sword And The Olive: A Critical History Of The Israeli Defense Force Aug 6, 2008

by Martin Van Creveld

( 28 )

$13.99

Combining razor-sharp analysis with dramatic narrative, vivid portraits of soldiers and commanders with illuminating discussions of battle tactics and covert actions, The Sword and the Olive traces the history of the IDF from its beginnings in Palestine to today. The book also goes beyond chronology to wrestle with the political and ethical struggles that have shaped the IDF and the country it servesstruggles that are manifesting themselves in the recent tragic escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Often revisionist in attitude, surprising in many of its conclusions, this book casts new light on the struggle for peace in the Middle East.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Transformation of War Nov 24, 2009

by Martin Van Creveld

( 64 )

$16.99

At a time when unprecedented change in international affairs is forcing governments, citizens, and armed forces everywhere to re-assess the question of whether military solutions to political problems are possible any longer, Martin van Creveld has written an audacious searching examination of the nature of war and of its radical transformation in our own time.

For 200 years, military theory and strategy have been guided by the Clausewitzian assumption that war is rational - a reflection of national interest and an extension of politics by other means. However, van Creveld argues, the overwhelming pattern of conflict in the post-1945 world no longer yields fully to rational analysis. In fact, strategic planning based on such calculations is, and will continue to be, unrelated to current realities.

Small-scale military eruptions around the globe have demonstrated new forms of warfare with a different cast of characters - guerilla armies, terrorists, and bandits - pursuing diverse goals by violent means with the most primitive to the most sophisticated weapons. Although these warriors and their tactics testify to the end of conventional war as we've known it, the public and the military in the developed world continue to contemplate organized violence as conflict between the super powers.

At this moment, armed conflicts of the type van Creveld describes are occurring throughout the world. From Lebanon to Cambodia, from Sri Lanka and the Philippines to El Salvador, the Persian Gulf, and the strife-torn nations of Eastern Europe, violent confrontations confirm a new model of warfare in which tribal, ethnic, and religious factions do battle without high-tech weapons or state-supported armies and resources. This low-intensity conflict challenges existing distinctions between civilian and solder, individual crime and organized violence, terrorism and war. In the present global atmosphere, practices that for three centuries have been considered uncivilized, such as capturing civilians or even entire communities for ransom, have begun to reappear.

Pursuing bold and provocative paths of inquiry, van Creveld posits the inadequacies of our most basic ideas as to who fights wars and why and broaches the inevitability of man's need to "play" at war. In turn brilliant and infuriating, this challenge to our thinking and planning current and future military encounters is one of the most important books on war we are likely to read in our lifetime.

Other Formats: Hardcover

The Changing Face of War: Combat from the Marne to Iraq Dec 18, 2008

by Martin van Creveld

( 30 )

$9.99

One of the most influential experts on military history and strategy has now written his magnum opus, an original and provocative account of the past hundred years of global conflict. The Changing Face of War is the book that reveals the path that led to the impasse in Iraq, why powerful standing armies are now helpless against ill-equipped insurgents, and how the security of sovereign nations may be maintained in the future.

While paying close attention to the unpredictable human element, Martin van Creveld takes us on a journey from the last century’s clashes of massive armies to today’s short, high-tech, lopsided skirmishes and frustrating quagmires. Here is the world as it was in 1900, controlled by a handful of “great powers,” mostly European, with the memories of eighteenth-century wars still fresh. Armies were still led by officers riding on horses, messages conveyed by hand, drum, and bugle. As the telegraph, telephone, and radio revolutionized communications, big-gun battleships like the British Dreadnought, the tank, and the airplane altered warfare.

Van Creveld paints a powerful portrait of World War I, in which armies would be counted in the millions, casualties–such as those in the cataclysmic battle of the Marne–would become staggering, and deadly new weapons, such as poison gas, would be introduced. Ultimately, Germany’s plans to outmaneuver her enemies to victory came to naught as the battle lines ossified and the winners proved to be those who could produce the most weapons and provide the most soldiers.

The Changing Face of War then propels us to the even greater global carnage of World War II. Innovations in armored warfare and airpower, along with technological breakthroughs from radar to the atom bomb, transformed war from simple slaughter to a complex event requiring new expertise–all in the service of savagery, from Pearl Harbor to Dachau to Hiroshima. The further development of nuclear weapons during the Cold War shifts nations from fighting wars to deterring them: The number of active troops shrinks and the influence of the military declines as civilian think tanks set policy and volunteer forces “decouple” the idea of defense from the world of everyday people.

War today, van Crevald tells us, is a mix of the ancient and the advanced, as state-of-the-art armies fail to defeat small groups of crudely outfitted guerrilla and terrorists, a pattern that began with Britain’s exit from India and culminating in American misadventures in Vietnam and Iraq, examples of what the author calls a “long, almost unbroken record of failure.”

How to learn from the recent past to reshape the military for this new challenge–how to still save, in a sense, the free world–is the ultimate lesson of this big, bold, and cautionary work. The Changing Face of War is sure to become the standard source on this essential subject.

Other Formats: Hardcover , Paperback

Wargames: From Gladiators to Gigabytes Apr 4, 2013

by Martin van Creveld

( 17 )

$12.00

Where did wargames come from? Who participated in them, and why? How is their development related to changes in real-life warfare? Which aspects of war did they capture, which ones did they leave out, how, and why? What do they tell us about the conduct of war in the times and places where they were played? How useful are they in training and preparation for war? Why are some so much more popular than others, and how do men and women differ in their interest? Starting with the combat of David versus Goliath, passing through the gladiatorial games, tournaments, trials by battle, duels, and board games such as chess, all the way to the latest simulations and computer games, this unique book traces the subject in all its splendid richness. As it does so, it provides new and occasionally surprising insights into human nature.

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Moshe Dayan (Great Commanders) Apr 30, 2015

by Martin van Creveld

( 18 )

$2.99

Martin van Creveld's Moshe Dayan tells the story of one man and of one people, to whom he was a figurehead - a symbol of their patriotism and their determination to survive. Born in a kibbutz in 1915, Dayan joined the Hagana when he was just fourteen, thus starting early a military career that saw him serve in every war fought in the Middle East from the War of Israeli Independence in 1948 to the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Twice he led his country's forces into smashing victories. Having planned and executed the one and directed the other, with his one eye he towers over them like Nelson over the Battle of Trafalgar.

Skilled in battle, skilled in diplomacy, like many powerful public figures, Moshe Dayan's private life was far from mundane. The book quotes from little-known sources, including an account written by one of his mistresses, that reveal much about his character and his life away from the battlefield. This is an honest portrayal of both the private and the public figure, which seeks to understand a man whose contribution to the state of Israel in its developing years was immeasurable.

Other Formats: Hardcover

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