Hannibal Crosses the Alps: The Invasion of Italy and the Second Punic War

I actually became aware of this book when reading an action thriller. Being a sometime military history buff, I thought it worth the read. In my opinion, a history like this, containing a multitude of location and movement descriptions, needs maps to go with it. What there were were few and far between. There were some photos, again, a map or two would help put them into context. i also found similar events described several times in different locations of the book, making the chronology difficult to track. Much of the source material was from third and forth parties many years removed form the events, so the story is the author's bues judgement of who may have had the best rumor written down. Apparently there is little archaeological or physical evidence, particularly in regards to the approach to the Alps and it's crossing. The information about Hannibal's character and documented exploits is interesting though and was worth the time to read it.

This book had less to do with the invasion of Italy and Rome than it did with which mountain pass Hannibal took crossing the Alps. Although well researched, the many editing problems made the book a chore to read. The genius of Hannibal was given only cursory attention as was the ultimate grand strategy in his expedition against Rome. There were excellent portions of the book but the overall content was comparable to reading a doctoral dissertation. This book is well suited to those needing a good source of reference material and not the casual history buff examining Rome's most feared adversary.

Good history on Punic wars. Little too much on speculating on route that Hannibal used to get to Italy.

Well researched but for some reason I came away wanting more detail.

Enjoyed the book knowing that alot of that history has been lost over time

kind of draggy

Well written, well researched history. Easy to read and fascinating. Provides historical background for a novel I read and informed me on a period of history with which I was unfamiliar.

Fairly technical

Very repetitive and ploddy