Temujin's War Academy

Book review - May

i've gotten Chinese Walled Cities by Stephen Turnbull. this is both hard and easy to review. Stephen Turnbull is mostly about Samurai topics and everythign else he writes on isn't so great. this book follows this pattern. the illustrations by Steve Noon, they are modest and OK to look at, the topics they depict are acceptable but maybe a little boring and uninspired. either way, Stephen Turnbull tries to give an overview over Chinese Walls from the Han dynasty up to the Ming, but really this book is mostly about Ming walls. the book makes much use of historical sources, some things are repeated from his other Osprey books about East Asian siege warfare to which he often refers, but really this would have needed an archaologist who actually talks about the walls and not just basic principles of defense and general stuff. he also has some exemplary sieges in Chinese Hsitory but really they do nothing to illustrate the purpose of the walls themselves but rather, again, Chinese Military strategems.