Another five-star review for Armies of the Adowa Campaign

Another review of Armies of the Adowa Campaign has appeared on Amazon. This one is by R.A. Forczyk, an Amazon Top 500 reviewer. It's my second five-star review. I also have a four-star review where the reviewer's only beef is that the book is too short! Forczyk's review is below: 

"If You Liked the Movie Zulu, You'll Love This Book

"Osprey's Men-at-Arms series, which has nearly 500 titles in print, has been gradually devolving into a litany of military uniform trivia and has seemingly run out of new or original titles. Then along came Sean McLachlan's Armies of the Adowa Campaign 1896, which is both original and focused on the kind of content that the MAA series used to deliver.

"Despite the fact that the Battle of Adowa was a large-scale action, it has received far less coverage than the smaller battles of the earlier Zulu War but it is fair to say that if you liked the film Zulu, you are likely to enjoy this volume. In short, in 1896 the Italians committed an army of 14,000 troops into an invasion of Ethiopia, but ran into an Ethiopian army near Adowa that was five times as large. In the resulting battle, the Italians were defeated piece-meal and were routed with more than 50 percent casualties. This is an excellent volume, with just the right mix of order-of-battle data, uniforms, weapons, campaign narrative and discussion of tactics.

"The volume begins with an introduction to the creation of the Italian colonies in East Africa and then moves into a campaign narrative that traces the beginning of the Italian confrontation with Ethiopia in 1895. A total of 18 pages are spent discussing the actual Battle of Adowa and includes a tactical sketch map. The author then details the composition, tactics and weapons of each army. The volume has useful B/W photos as well as eight color plates depicting uniforms. Overall, this is a very satisfying volume and provides a great introduction to the worst colonial defeat of the Nineteenth Century. Armies of the Adowa Campaign is very well written and well researched."