"An admirable, incisive survey with several incisive insights. I do not know of any other serious academic volume which provides a longue durée approach to the history of fortification from prehistoric to the modern age. This book will be to worth its weight in gold for both beginners and masters of the field." --Kaushik Roy, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India, and Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway "Black has proposed an original and timely global history on the important role defenses have played in the grand strategy of great powers." --Andrew Lambert, Laughton Professor of Naval History, King's College, London "I know of no one else who has the knowledge and analytical skills to carry out this ambitious project, nothing less than a global history of fortifications. Black is a brilliant historian. He is able to cut across cultures and eras with a skill that is unmatched. He is a careful historian, known for his accuracy.

He is also a gifted storyteller, able to write for a general as well as specialist audiences. He is able to write in a clear and direct way. He pulls together and makes accessible a great deal of information. Furthermore, he is an insightful strategic analyst, who leaves the reader with important findings, conclusions." --John H. Maurer, U.S. Naval War College "Drawing on compelling comparisons informed by social and economic factors, Jeremy Black brings a global perspective and a clear understanding of how fortifications and siegecraft served specific military tasks.

An invaluable contribution to a topic often overlooked in military history, his book highlights the ongoing interplay between defensive works and modes of attack in sophisticated and insightful ways." --Stephen Morillo, Wabash College "With striking clarity, Black reveals how war across the ages has turned on fortifications. From ancient Mesopotamia to Mosul in the twenty-first century, armies have paid in blood for attacking them. Black charts the history of this long struggle between flesh and masonry, revealing how different cultures across the ages have used, located, developed, and elaborated such structures. Equally, he analyzes the interaction between fortifications and attack, revealing how human ingenuity has been applied to capturing forts; every method, from bloody assaults to bribery, has been applied. But, as Black shows, short of total destruction of the target, siege warfare is a terrible and costly business, even for the most modern of armies." --John France, Swansea University.