michael_k's review against another edition

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3.0

Very interesting and concise.

luciab's review against another edition

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informative

3.5

zhelana's review against another edition

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I gave up on this book. It seemed like every single mistake they were talking about was basically taking on a larger army, or not using your army's advantages, and basically other than one chapter about killing cats during the black death, it was all military mistakes. That's really not what I was looking for. I'm personally happy history has moved on from the days when it was all military history all the time. I was looking for more stories like the cats/rats thing. I read about half this book thinking it might get better as we got more recent, but I got as far as Napoleon before giving up.

adriana_tia's review against another edition

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informative reflective medium-paced

3.0

mlottermoser's review against another edition

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2.0

The writing drove me a bit crazy. It was like listening to a pompous history professor criticize important people throughout history with not enough background information.

christine_georgia23's review against another edition

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challenging informative medium-paced

2.0

Not great, not terrible, not the most appealing subject. I started reading the book with the impression that I will learn some new information but the entire book was about historical events that could have been considered "mistakes" from some perspectives. I wasn't impressed in any way, as I wanted to read more facts about universal history and the most of them were related to the American history.

darknetreads's review against another edition

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challenging informative slow-paced

1.0

sbrilliant's review against another edition

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3.0

This book was too Western- and military-centric for my tastes. All but maybe 4 of the 100 were mistakes made in battle. But for what it was, it was okay

kataboy's review against another edition

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2.0

Nice book but a little to much emphasis in military events. Anyway a very nice and entertaining read.

tharina's review against another edition

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3.0

Very informative and insightful. My one gripe would be that it was very focused on US history and World War II. Surely the scope exists to include more information from African, Asian and South American history?