Reviews

Chariot: From Chariot to Tank, the Astounding Rise and Fall of the World’s First War Machine

Arthur Cotterell (New York: Overlook Press, 2005) 344 pp., $29.95

When thinking of war, we tend to imagine heavily armed tank columns rolling across the plains of Europe or Iraq (rather than, say, infantry combat in the jungles of Vietnam or the backstreets of Baghdad). This marriage of mobility and firepower is not new. The most deadly combat forces of the Middle Ages were the cavalry of Europe and the mounted archers of central Asia. Still earlier, the horse-drawn chariot, with driver and bowman, reigned supreme for nearly a millennium on battlefields from Egypt to China.

While modern tanks and medieval cavalry have received ample attention in popular and scholarly literature, however, the chariot has largely been ignored. In Chariot: From Chariot to Tank, the Astounding Rise and Fall of the World’s First War Machine, Arthur Cotterell sets out to redress that imbalance and give the chariots of the ancient world and the men who fought in them their due.