Through the ages, man has been seemingly eager for conflict and as a result, has had some pretty impressive battles; often with a large price to pay in human suffering and death. As quickly as these battles are fought, the people of the surrounding area are anxious to remove traces of it from their lives. When one visits a battlefield, it is not what is there that is surprising, but what is gone. Most of these area are now simple fields or covered over with cities and towns leaving little more than memorials and cemeteries behind.

Author Alfred Bullesbach has spent the last few years travelling through Europe to photograph 34 different battlefields that have made a lasting impression on history. Starting with Alesia in 52 BC and ending with the final assault on Berlin at Seelow Heights in 1945, two thousand years of conflict are covered with such places as Hastings in 1066, Austerlitz in 1805, Verdun in 1916, and Normady in 1944. These photographs are of the battlefields as they are today and brought to us with superlative images that cover nearly two feet from one side of the page to the other. In amongst the images of the battlefield are those of the memorials and cemeteries that dot the landscape; especially in the battles of the last century.

Each entry is accompanied by a short history of the event and its significance to history. It is an outstanding book on how these places are today and one that I can easily recommend to you.

February 2010

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