Ian Walker for Crowood A history of the Italian Army’s three armoured divisions in North Africa is something that we’ve needed for a bit. Walker goes native in defending his Italians but not overly so. He does not, however, like Rommel who he considers a chancer who blamed others when his gambles came adrift. He starts his tale in World War One with the first armoured units and goes through the inter-war years so that we understand where the problems arose. As a general summary I found this most useful. The meat of the book is the accounts of the fighting (mostly of Ariete). Because Walker describes the fighting as it affects the Italian units one sees features often missed in other accounts. The courage of the Italian crews in their under-gunned M13s (and pride in their Semoventes) was to be the fate of their opponents in Normandy. Some good photos and passable maps all make this a useful book on an under-covered bit of history. Old Duffer's Book Corner Book Reviews The First Armies Verdun 1916 Russia's Civil War Luetzen 1632 Philip V of Spain The End of Chivalry Le Roi De Guerre Warships of the Napoleonic Era Cannae The Death of Anglo-Saxon England Ancient Siege Warfare War and Society in Revolutionary Europe 1770-1870 Forgotten Victory The Remaking of the English Navy Cassino: The Hollow Victory Raising Churchill's Army The Imperial War Museum Book of the War in Italy The Irish And British Wars 1637-1654 Cavaliers: The Royalist Army At War 1642-1646 Alamein Normandy 1944 Hill 112 Breaking The Panzers Béveziers (1690) Paths of Glory: The French Army 1914-18 Caesar’s Legion Operation Bluecoat Operation Epsom Marching to the Sound of Gunfire The Franco-Prussian War Robert the Bruce’s Irish Wars When Titans Clashed The Wars of Edward III Monte Cassino Under Fire The Somme Roads to Falaise Mud, Blood And Poppycock All The Kaiser’s Men Iron Hulls Iron Hearts A Noble Crusade The Pendulum of Battle: Operation Goodwood The English Resistance The Battle of Koniggrätz Pallas Armata Back to Perfidious Albion #104 Table of Contents Back to Perfidious Albion List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Charles and Teresa Vasey. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com