Warriors of the Steppe: A Military History of Central Asia, 500 B.C. to 1700 A.D.

By Erik Hildinger

Book Overview

The nomadic peoples of central Asia--Huns, Bulgars, Magyars, Mongols--are still known to us for their legendary fighters Attila, Genghis Khan, and Timur Lenk (Tamerlane), as well as for their feats of calculated brutality. (Timur Lenk would leave piles of severed heads in his conquered cities; another tribe sent nine sacks of ears to their khan.) Less studied is the remarkable effectiveness of their battle techniques: For two thousand years, these horse-archer armies were an unstoppable force to sedentary peoples, be they Romans, Crusaders, Chinese, or medieval. Erik Hildinger introduces the most important of these raiders as well as a host of other tribes and examines in detail their tactics, strategies, and weaponry--a form of highly mobile and defensive warfare that even armies of today can learn from.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0306810654
• ISBN13: 9780306810657
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Teenager Interested in History

This was an amazing book! Everyone should read it. I may be a teenager, but I am really interested in history, and this book was so informative and cool!

Good reading

This is a well-written and researched book.It outlines the history of nomadic raiders including the Scythians, Parthians, Sarmatians, Huns, Bulgars, Turks, Mongols, Tatars who fought against Greece, Rome, Byzantium, China, Russia, Ukraine, and the Ottomans. Hildinger maintains that raiding sedentary peoples was necessary for survival of horse-mounted warriors. They were made extinct by rifle toting infantry.Hildinger is at his best when recounting the defensive tactics used victims of the horsemen. Regretfully, he does not detail the fighting tactics between the Tatars and the Cossacks. His best description is how Roman infantry fought the Parthians.

Outstanding. Buy this book!

As a university lecturer in military history I am constantly looking for good books for my students (both civilians and army officer cadets) to study. Hildinger's book is marvellous, and I recommend it to my students as an example of how warfare should be analysed and history should be written.

Should I buy this book? I'm very interested in this subject.

I haven't read, but judgeing from the summaries and reviews, there is no mention of most of these groups that are Turkic, or rather no mention to Turks at all. Turks are the most successful Central Asiatic people that have bridged east and west and was able to maintain its culture and values.

Fascinating, little-known history.

The Huns, Mongols, Tartars, and other Central Asian warriors were the epitome of specialized cavalry, and the terror of the West for many centuries Their weapons and tactics, and the nomadic existence from which they sprang, are analyzed in detail in this remarkably readable history, the first work to examine the steppe warriors from a military perspective. With photos, maps, and diagrams, Hildinger's work is a valuable addition to military history and the history of an area which is little known in the West. The "score" rating is an unfortunately ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not willingly "score" books.)