- Lynn Montross
Lynn Montross was born in
Battle Creek ,Nebraska in 1895, and lived inDenver, Colorado , before moving toWashington, D.C. He studied at theUniversity of Nebraska before serving three years in anAmerican Expeditionary Force (AEF)regiment inWorld War I (akaWorld War I ) and afterward, became a free-lance writer for theChicago Daily News . He died in 1961, barely a year after the publication of the third edition his most important book,War Through the Ages [http://www.amazon.com/War-Through-Ages-Lynn-Montross/dp/0060130008] .Lynn Montress is one of the foremost post-
World War II Western military historians. From 1950 to 1961 he was a historical writer for theUnited States Marine Corps and lived in theWashington, D.C. area. Though he only published seven books during his life, his insightful monumental lifetime work, War Through the Ages (1960), stands as one of the important works ofmilitary history in the 20th century. It has been used as a text book by various military academies.It is clear from Mr. Montross' notes that the work was inspired by Gibbon's famous workOr|date=September 2008,
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1787), and Lynn Montross successfully translates the style and grandueur of Gibbon's work to a telling narrative and analysis ofmilitary history from 490 B.C. to theKorean War . Lynn Montross' version of military history is more aboutdiplomacy ,politics ,culture , andeconomics , and the continuity and great movements of history than about specific battles, the names ofgeneral s, and mundane operational details, though he also fits lot of those into his narrative, imparting upon the reader his unusual sense of military history in the process.A fair reading of
Trevor N. Dupuy andR. Ernest Dupuy 's great work,The Encyclopedia of Military History , shows Lynn Montross' continuing influence on his contemporaries and succeeding generations of military history writers. Not only does the Encyclopedia of Military History use the same illustrations as those found in War Through the Ages, but also, interspersed with the chronologies of battles and generals, the Encyclopedia has Montross-like narrative sections describing specific periods of history, or particular battles.References
External links
* [http://www.experiencefestival.com/lynn_montross List of materials relating to Lynn Montross]
* [http://www.harpers.org/search.php?q=lynn+montross Articles available at Harpers Magazine (fee)]
* [http://openlibrary.org/a/OL1910832A List of works by Lynn Montross]
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