"Hurrah, boys, we've got them!" General Custer reportedly told his troops before the Battle of Little Bighorn. From the massacre of the Roman general Varus and his legions in the Black Forest in AD 9 to the present-day conflict in Afghanistan, Military Blunders analyses why things go wrong on the battlefield and who is to blame. This informative and fascinating account features, among other classic military disasters, the Second Crusade, Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, the retreat from Kabul in 1840, the Charge of the Light Brigade and the Battle for Goose Green.

Saul David's graphic accounts of the most spectacular cock-ups in military history have a great deal to say not just about the psychology of incompetence, but also the reasons even the most well-oiled war machines inflict disaster upon themselves.