Product Description

The Argentine invasion of the Falklands in 1982 sparked national outrage and Britain felt she had to avenge such a humiliation and protect her own. This volume explores both the military and political dimensions of this important conflict, including detailed accounts of the air / sea battle, the Battle for San Carlos Water, Goose Green, Mount Harriet, Tumbledown and many others. It explains how success in the Falklands set the stage for the years of Thatcher's dominance, and restored British prestige. Including first hand accounts from both soldiers and civilians, this is an interesting, and thoroughly up to date appraisal.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #129891 in Books
• Published on: 2002-02-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

About the Author
Dr Anderson is head of the Department of War Studies at Sandhurst. His main interests are military and diplomatic history, from the mid eighteenth century to the present. His books include Modern Military Elites (1993), D Day (1994), The Battle for Manila (with John Pimlott and Richard Connaughton, 1995). The World at War (1999) and the Fall of the Reich (2000). His battlefield tours conducted for both the British and American armies include Salamanca, Waterloo, the Somme, El Alamein, Normandy and the Falklands.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic
They say you should never judge a book by its cover, how true that is. I was fortunate enough to explore through a few falklands books and this one looked the most promising, I wasn't dissapointed, the author accounts the war almost as if it were a story, and in some places it is truly gripping. Inside the pages are detailed maps, diagrams and photos explaining nearly every aspect of the war in superb and easy to understand detail. This book is a must read for anyone who wishes to learn about the Falklands war.

Comprehensive and competent, yet slightly pro-British and politically naive
Now more than a quarter of a century ago, the Falklands War of 1982 still stirs up a lot of emotion. Was it a war started by an evil South American dictator in order to distract public attention from domestic economic and social problems, or was it a conflict aggravated unnecessarily by a Cold War-obsessed paranoiac accidentally British PM at the time? Was it a minor conflict that brought Argentina's right-wing miltary junta down or a major engagement of modern forces equipped with state-of-the-art weaponry which resurrected Britain's lost pride as a colonial world power?

This tiny volume will not answer these complex questions in full, but it will definitely provide the reader with a treasure of basic information on the prologue to the war, the actual campaign, and its aftermath. Of course, it doesn't tell the whole story and is slightly pro-British. However, experienced readers will only take it as a starting point for their own research into the subject anyway. This ís the main purpose of this book, which it achieves in quite a convincing way.

The only real disadvantage of this book is its apparent lack of neutrality with regard to the political and moral evaluation of the Malvinas conflict, fuelled by the apparent political naivety of the author. Britain's military cooperation with Chile is mentioned, yet no attention is given to the fact that the Chilean regime was as tyrannical and as fascistic as Argentina's junta at the time. Thatcher's collaboration with Chile clearly demonstrates that the PM's goal was neither to restore democracy in Argentina nor to liberate those poor Kelpers from Argentine rule. The Iron Lady's aim was to demonstrate that Britain even without overt armed assistance from the U.S. was still a major political and military force to be reckoned with. After all, that's why Thatcher in her old days still considered Chile's Pinochet to be someone to have tea with despite his appalling record as a dictator and enemy of democracy - a sobering fact which is not at all treated in the book.

If you're looking for a comprehensive summary of the major events defininig the Falklands War, this book is a recommendable investment of your time and your money, though.

A disappiontment
Having the read the other review of this book, I can only think that either I have read a different book, opr that that the reviewer is a personal freind of the author. This is a dull book: a poorly written re-heat of the conventional wisdom in this area.