The Decisive Battles of World History

by Gregory S. Aldrete

Many of the most decisive turning points in the history of the world have been battles. More than just conflicts between armies, such moments often represent fundamental clashes among rival religions; cultures; and social, political, and economic systems. The outcomes of these battles have dramatically transformed and shaped the course of history, often sending it on unexpected or completely new paths. This course examines more than three dozen such pivotal moments, highlighting and exposing the key incidents and personalities responsible for these critical shifts. During the course of these lectures, we'll discover how the Battle of Yarmouk contributed to the establishment of Islam in the Middle East; how the Battle of the Talas River curbed the expansion of the Tang dynasty of China; how the Battle of Boyaca resulted in South American independence from Spain; and how the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, fought on the borders of Mongolia and Manchuria, influenced the entire direction of World War II in both Europe and the Pacific.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Audiobook, War, Military Fiction, Military History, Historical

19 pages, Audible Audio

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Melindam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am neither a history buff, nor very keen on wars, but I have to say I was totally taken with these series of lectures by Gregory S. Aldrete and I tore through pretty quickly of more than 18 hours of listening.

Aldrete is a talented speaker/narrator who captures your attention and manages to hold it throughout by painting a vivid and intriguing picture abot the battles he chose with human, political, technological, strategic geographic and all kinds of factors and his enthusiam is very catchy.

I have not enough historical ken to decide whether the battles he talks about were really the turning point for an event in history, but he sounds very convincing.

Also, I liked the wide variety of battles he presented and that he went absolutely beyond a "European/US" point of view and talked about battles in Ancient Egypt and China, the battles for/against Islam as well as Aztecs and Inca versus conquistadors, later battles in Japan and China, etc.

Each lecture is approx. 30 minuntes long and well worth listening to.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great overview and discussion of the decisive battles of history. Full of great information and tidbits about many battles that outcomes forged the world we live in. Very impressed with this "course".

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a solid look at 40+ important battles. You could pick and choose which you'd want to listen to, since it can be a bit much to binge.

Here's the list of the battles covered in the course, in chronological order:

Kadesh- 1274 BCE
Plataea- 479 BCE
Gaugamela- 331 BCE
Chinese Unification- 260-110 BCE
Cynoscephalae- 197 BCE
Actium- 31 BCE
Teutoburg Forest- 9 CE
Frigidus River- 394 CE
Badr- 624 CE
Yarmouk & al-Qadisiyyah- 636 CE
Talas- 751 CE
Hastings- 1066
Hattin- 1187
Tarain- 1192
Ain Jalut- 1260
Tannenberg- 1410
Diu- 1509
Tenochtitlan- 1521
Cajamarca- 1532
1st Panipat- 1526
2nd Panipat- 1556
Lepanto- 1571
Sacheon- 1592
Sekigahara- 1600
Vienna- 1683
Poltava- 1709
Quebec- 1759
Trenton- 1776
Trafalgar- 1805
Leipzig- 1813
Ayacucho- 1824
San Jacinto- 1836
Antietam- 1862
Koniggratz- 1866
Tsushima- 1905
Marne- 1914
Khalkin Gol- 1939
Midway- 1942
Stalingrad- 1942
D-Day- 1944
Arab-Israeli War- 1948-49
Dien Bien Phu-1954

[Gilbert Stack · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best Great Courses audiobooks that I have listened to. Aldrete offers a thoughtful look at more than three dozen major battles and argues for why they changed the course of the world. So not only do you get an introduction that provides the context of the battles and a description of the battle itself, you get a conclusion that cogently lays out how the battle altered the status quo in a way that affected an area for decades and often centuries. A wonderful account all around.

If you liked this review, you can find more at www.gilbertstack.com/reviews.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun excuse to revisit some of the worlds most important battles. He picked some controversial ones and skipped some of the normal ones that are on most people's lists but he explains why he made these choices well if not completely convincingly. I disagree with Kadesh, I never heard of Khalkha Gol(Which for me makes the whole lecture series worth it for that alone), and think his choice of Antietam over Gettysburg a stretch.

All in all a good lecture with an enthusiastic and enjoyable speaker. Well worth your time

[Afifah Mim · Rating 5 out of 5]

যুদ্ধের ইতিহাস। (বিভিন্ন ঘটনার মাঝে 'কানেক্টিং দ্য ডটস')


কোর্সটা বেশ ভালো লেগেছে। দিনকে দিন এই প্রফেসরের ফ্যান হয়ে যাচ্ছি।


'যুদ্ধ ও ইতিহাস' টপিকটা স্টাডি শুরু করার কিছু পরে মোটামুটি "ইন্টারমিডিয়েট লেভেলে" এসে এই অনলাইন কোর্সটা বেস্ট। আমার মতে- মেবি, মাস্ট ওয়াচ। (তবে এই বিষয়ে "এক্সপার্টদের" জন্য না)


(Wondrium app ~ Online Course)

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Starting a review now so that I can capture the criteria for a Decisive Battle:

- Biased towards the more obscure over obvious (if there's a case the lesser known battle is decisive)
-- For example, Liepzig over Waterloo

- What makes a battle decisive? Multiple things:
-- Battles that are militarily decisive- Battle of Gougamela where the loser (Persians) immediately lost political power to the victor (Alexander)
-- Battles that weren't entirely militarily decisive, but still resulted in loss of a major capability on one side (typically naval battles) - Battle of Trafalgar changed Napoleon's grand strategy away from an invasion of Britain and towards an invasion of Russia
-- Important social, political, or religious effects. May not have seemed pivotal at the time- Battle of Ain Jalut, where the Mongols march across Eurasia was halted, or Washington crossing the Delaware and winning the battle of Trenton, without which the American Revolution probably dies.
-- Did not pick many Chinese battles in antiquity, despite size of battle, because they were factional and the winner wouldn't have changed global history. Conversely, many decisive battles were fought between two different cultures, because that tended to cause geopolitical shifts.
-- Battles that halted the advance of invading cultures, such as the Battle of Vienna that halted Islamic expansion into Europe
-- Did not pick battles that had preordained outcomes. While the Battle of Berlin (WWII) resulted in immediate political shifts (see above) the allied victory was never in question. Even if the first battle had failed (it didn't) the Allies would have just kept attacking until they won. In other words, a counterfactual history must be at least somewhat possible.
-- Introduced a key technological or superior system (the latter: the Romans' ability to beat the Greeks.)

Overall, I enjoyed the lectures. The instructor did a great job splitting the focus between the personal history of the commanders and the battle itself, but did have some distracting pauses occasionally. Having said that, I would strongly recommend this to anyone interested in the way wars determine history, and the way battles determine wars.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really enjoyable series. I listened to the audio version, and thought the lessons were entertaining and easy to follow. I think my favorite part of this series may have actually been the information that the author provides on the events, circumstances, and decisions that led to each conflict. The lectures (Gregory Aldrete), has an interesting, almost halting manner of speaking that actually works very well in the context of a lecture. He offers concise insight that allows you to get a feel for the nature and magnitude of these battles, without giving so much detail that you feel overwhelmed. This was my first Great Course, but I definitely plan on downloading some others.

[Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Review of the Audiobook

Published by The Great Courses in 2014.
Lectures delivered by the author, Gregory S. Aldrete.
Duration: 18 hours, 29 minutes.
Unabridged.

As long as there has been war, there has been discussions about which battles were the most important, the most pivotal. This takes some analysis, since the temptation might be to simply discuss the battle that finally ended a long conflict, like Appomattox was the functional end to the American Civil War.

The temptation might also be to collect a list of the biggest battles of history, but that would exclude Aldrete's tiniest choice - the Battle of San Jacinto. While that battle had less than 2,500 soldiers, he persuasively argues that the battle not only made Texas independent from Mexico, it also set off a chain of events that led directly the the American Civil War, Reconstruction and more.

Adlrete presents the battles in chronological order and spends at least as much time on the background information of each battle as he does on the battles themselves. A few of the entries are not battles, but are entire campaigns.

Almost all of these lectures are informative and entertaining, but I did find the one set in Medieval Japan to be very hard to follow. I found that to be surprising since I took two classes on this topic back in college.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5.

[Craig Cote · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you like history, this is a great overview of some of the most important battles that shaped the world in known history. The lectures are delivered by an engaging speaker, and the 30 minute-per-lecture format is just about right for an overview. I missed the depth I got from the lecture on 1066, but that was 6 hours long -- if I want that depth, I'll have to perhaps find other individual lectures for the battles I'm interested in learning more about. :) Altogether a fantastic "read".

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Decisive Battles of World History is a series of 36 lectures provided by Professor Gregory S. Aldrete, on what he has concluded are the military battles that have, more or less, changed the course of world history. These battles may have had a significant impact on such things as the development or, conversely, the elimination of certain civilizations and/or religions; the promotion of certain technologies, or the progressing of certain cultures. Whatever the reason, these battles are those, as the professor admits, that he has personally determined have made the world, be it good or bad, what it is today. In doing this, he explains what makes a battle decisive in his first lecture, and continues on beginning in 1274 B. C. with a battle of chariots in Kadesh near the modern Lebanon-Syrian border to post World-War II battles in Israel and Viet Nam.

This course took me an interminable amount of time to complete, and it isn't because the lectures weren't interesting, but because there were so many of them. I believe that if I would have listened to the lectures and read the course book in a more timely fashion, I would have been better rewarded and been more knowledgeable about this subject. As it was, I had a hard time remembering some of the first battles, and their ramifications on later battles in history. This is why Professor Aldrete suggests that we try doing the What If? test on some some of these battles. As an example, even though Stalingrad may have been the turning point for Germany in the Second World War, regardless of the D-Day landings (if you don't believe that, look at the numbers), what if D-Day would never have happened? What, as a result, would Russia have done to the rest of Europe as it continued to march through Germany if the Allies had not landed at Normandy? These are the type of questions Professor Aldrete makes us think about and ponder. Consequently, it becomes, not only, a course on world history, but a course on world introspection for not only mankind today, but for the world as a whole.

As a result, the further I continued through this course, the more I understood what Professor Aldrete was trying to communicate with his students. There are many times we have heard that if we don't learn the lessons of history, we are inclined to make the same mistakes. I believe that the professor has most certainly proven this point in these lectures, and, consequently, it is one that everyone should watch to not only see how the course of history was changed because of a few battles, but, in addition, how the mistakes or successes that occurred have made us what we are today.

I believe the only thing that bothered me about this series related to how certain people see military strategy and its eventual outcome insensitively. I believe in many cases, these battles were almost viewed as a board game without really considering the personal ramifications of each individual soldier/victim. And maybe this is the weakness of world leaders in deciding whether to go to war. There are too many people that see an 18 year old soldier who has their whole life ahead of them as just a marker on a board, and they don't see the potential of what that person could do in the future. In thinking about the battle in Stalingrad between Germany (Hitler) and Russia (Stalin), the losses cannot even be fathomed considering that Germany lost 11 million troops and Russia lost 23 million during that war, and all those young men were was a marker on a map. I guess if we want to know what a soldier really experiences, we read novels like All Quiet on the Western Front, or see movies like Saving Private Ryan.

Nevertheless, Professor Aldrete is an excellent lecturer. He is very interesting and easy to understand with no, a least that I noticed, annoying mannerisms. Overall, I consider the course a great one (The Great Courses!), and well worth taking the time to listen to.

[Bobsie67 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Professor Aldrete is a very energetic presenter and his lectures are both informative and entertaining. This series of lectures is a chronological study of Prof. Aldrete's "decisive battles" in world history, from ancient Egypt to the modern world. Every lecture starts with a presentation of the combatants, the general societal and political issues of the time, why the battle (or often battles) were fought, who won and the how and why they won, as well as the long-term consequences that faced the victor as well as the defeated. In Prof. Aldrete's discussion of China circa 260-100 BC, he states that there really was no one decisive battle, but a series of battles over the centuries that helped shaped China's future. In a few other circumstances, it is also evident that a "decisive battle" often stemmed from other more minor battle; whoever, the ultimate conflict was most decisive in determining future outcomes. So, thirty-six lectures means that many more than thirty-six battles are discussed. The accompanying PDF helps with keeping track of all the combatants. I still needed to search the internet for maps of the battles to help visual the various battlegrounds, weapons and armor used, and the types of ships discussed. If you are looking for great depth on particular battles, than this series will disappoint, as it is intended as a general survey. You can spend a lifetime reading the details on each battle reviewed.

[Jonathan Harbour · Rating 2 out of 5]

My previous review posted one week ago has been removed by Audible. I will not tolerate censorship, especially as a Platinum member. We have enough fascism going on in "dot coms" today.

This lecturer is nasal and speaks poorly with numerous mispronunciations of common words to the point of distraction. Words like "Germania". I did not mind at first but in a course of this length, trifling irritations become a nuisance.

The battles chosen are only relevant about half the time, thus I found myself ffw'ing many to get to interesting ones. This reduces the overall value.

Finally, the addition of a fake audience is reminiscent of a bad 80s TV game show. The artificial applause (which is precisely the same sound clip repeated 30 times) is hard to miss and further detracts from the quality of the lectures, which are not taught but narrated.

[Haoyan Do · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, "The Decisive Battles of World History" is almost a sequel to "History's Great Military Blunders and the Lessons They Teach". When I finished one, I have to finish the other. I have to say I like this one even better. The inclusion of Japanese Russian Japanese conflicts (Battle of Tsushima, Battles of Khalkhin Gol), failed Japanese invasion of Korea, the brilliant general Yi Sun-sin during the Imjin war are fascinating. I can't believe that I'm so ignorant that I don't know these things at all even if I consider myself a person interested in history and military conflicts. I obviously think too well of myself.

Just like many other readers who gave comments, I don't like the details of the military conflicts, but rather I enjoy the background information, characters of the people involved, and historical contexts. I wish there are more historical contents offered for those battles happened in East and Southeast Asia, but the way the lectures are arranged doesn't give enough space for those kind of elaborations.

[Edwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this survey of historically important battles. Aldrete starts and ends with the point that there is always constant disagreement about what makes a battle "decisive" and which battles meet such criteria. I appreciated that he didn't see the need to continually defend his criteria but instead spent his time explaining the historical context for each of his selections and discussing the aftermath and impacts of the battles. I also enjoyed hearing about some lesser well-known battles in this collection.
My only quibble is that Aldrete is not a great narrator. He did a good job pronouncing names and words from numerous languages, but his inflection was, at times, very odd, and there seemed to be a number of somewhat awkward pauses, especially at the start of the lectures (as though he wasn't sure how to begin his presentation).

[Hans · Rating 2 out of 5]

Score: 2/5 (parts worth listening once)
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Themes: military history
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This audiobook shines when discussing what it means for a battle to be decisive in the context of warfare. It does have valuable insights throughout the lectures to give context when considering the battles and wars that are included.

However, this work does not stand on its own. It will be up to you to gather more information (usually video documentaries) because the lectures do a poor job of giving strategic-political context or tactical context to events. I recommend the "Kings and Generals" channel on YouTube when they also cover the events in question.

I suppose your mileage will vary depending on why you are here, but I'm stumped to figure out who would regard this as a complete work on its own.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always been utterly fascinated by why humankind simply "does what it does!" I have discovered that warfare plays an immense part in shaping the lives of peoples destiny through the centuries of unending conflicts that civilizations have had to endure. One underlying theme emerges in all of this is that millions die and suffer to feed the absolute fatal attraction of greed and power by a very controlling few. If we could just change the battlefield to a 64 square chess board we would be a much more civilized society, but again I think I just give the human race way too much credit. We are most likely doomed to metaphorically keep "shooting ourselves in the foot!" This book was very well researched and I would recommend it.

[Kim Dennis · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the most part this was pretty good. It isn't a great book to listen to while I was cleaning -- it was hard for me to stay focused on something non-fiction that long. I did like learning more, and I really liked the fact that he didn't take a Euro-centric approach. He included battles from all over so I was able to learn about some areas I'm pretty weak in. There were a couple of battles that I have studied on quite a bit, and my understanding of the details was a little different than he presented them. However, that does happen sometimes in history.

[Jonathan Harris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of upside here. Chapters are a neat, uniform length (about 30mins for audio); I really enjoyed the little incidental details mentioned for each battle -- armaments, recruitment, personalities -- moreso than the descriptions of the battles themselves.

The main issue for me is the length of the overall work. It's a little too weighty, and I'm not sure I was clear on why every example was so decisive.

The audio performance just fine, and the Great Courses clap/lecture effect didn't bother me.

[Scott Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Audiobook) Perhaps the best part of these series of courses is that it isn’t just focused on one era or one single part of the world. There is a good mix of battles across ages and parts of the world. Each with a significance that goes beyond what happened on the field of battle. There is good logic for the decisions and it is not too technical in military or political terms. Worth the listen for a history buff or one who wants a broader span of history.

[Enrico · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good course in which the professor talks about a single battle per lecture that changed history in his view. He talks about the context before the battle, then how the actual battle itself played out and then gives further context what changed after this battle. The professor is a really good speaker and knows how to tell a good story. The lectures are not dependent on one another.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent course on how world history has evolved through decisive battles. Sad really that war has had such an impact in the direction of our history and that so many people feel war is the answer. Wonder where we would be if history had unfolded in a tradition of peace. So much death and carnage. But fascinating nonetheless.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well summarised. Even a war history geek like me has plenty of new material to savor even though the text is limited because of the format. The choices are interesting, since Aldrete didn't pick the most obvious choices like Salamis or Alesia or D-day, but chose some unusual battles with very reasonable reasons.

[Eric Mortensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provides a fascinating perspective on pivotal moments in world history allowing the reader to consider the effects of technology, geography, personality and economics to provide pivot points in the development of cultures resulting in transformative changes for the history of mankind.

[Aaron Levin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! As someone looking for a broad sweep of military history this was perfect. The length of each segment was just right and the lecture was very engaging. I found myself looking forward to the next episode and glued to the whole series in a way I didn't expect. Highly recommended.

[NewGR · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book! Learned a lot from it and never got boring.

Would I re-read this book? Yes
Would I keep a copy in my collection? Yes
Would I recommend this book to someone? Yes
Would I gift this book to someone? Yes

[Firassb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! The book goes to great lengths to explain the background, history, and preparations of each battle with a both of amusing moments and tragic stories

[Jeff Andersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phenomenal!

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved it.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book turned out great and provided many interesting insights on the backgrounds of the battles many of which I knew well but learned new details.