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If all history were this well written, everyone would be a historian. War Made New: Weapons, Warriors, and the Making of the Modern World by Max Boot is a joy to read.

His writing is clear. That’s rare enough to be notable. I can summarize the five themes in his four military revolutions because he’s not trying to hide anything. Nor does he dumb things down in a “who moved my cheese?” type of exercise.

The military revolutions:

• Gunpowder revolution - Spanish Armada, the Swedes (!), all the way through the Napoleonic wars
• First industrial revolution - Consolidation of Germany through World War I
• Second industrial revolution - World War II
• Information revolution - in progress

The themes:

• Technology is not enough. Organization (read: government structure) matters in the application of innovation.
• History’s winners harnessed these shifts.
• Applying innovation effectively does not compensate for over-weaning ambition. See Hitler’s Eastern Front.
• Being first never lasts. Successes are copied, and the defeated learn lessons faster than the victors.
• Innovation is accelerating. And the predominance of the US is not to be taken for granted.

Boot references Guns, Germs and Steel, and while the message is different, the scope, academic thoroughness and journalistic storytelling are similar. War Made New is sweeping and ambitious, but with the right touch of detail. Boot has a clear theme, and abundant examples, carefully chosen. And, for some of the key battlefields he uses to illustrate his points, he includes diagrams and maps. These may not be necessary for famous campaigns such as the Nazi Germany blitzkreig of France and Belgium in 1940, but I couldn’t have found Breitenfeld on a map before now (and might be hard-pressed even today).

Boot is convincing, not pedantic, even though Wikipedia considers him a neoconservative. I found the point of view consistent and well-argued, and not obviously “neocon” in any charicatured way. But I’ve also been influenced by the writings of Robert Kaplan, one of the many, many sources Boot cites.

I may not dive into his earlier books, but I admire such command of material, combined with the talent to share it with others.