Warpaths.

In the original dustsheet. Black cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

• A highly collectible book.

Geography and military history have come to explain each other in North America as they do nowhere else in the world. From the arrival of the Europenans in the 16th century to the final defeat of the native Americans in the 19th, climate and competition for resources explain why men fortified where they did, campaigned as they did and were drawn to the battlefields where the control of the continent was decided. Warpaths begins with the establishment of New France on the St Lawrence River and the French conflicts with the Indians and British - culminating with the English defeat at Yorktown. There follows the Civil War between North and South, as well as the Indian wars. The book ends with the final twist in the story of European warfare in North America, as American and Canadian forces arrive to save Britain and liberate France in the Second World War.

Review: I am a fan of John Keegan. History, especially military history, and geography as it relates to history are among my favorite reading topics and as such, John Keegan's body of work has been, title after title, highly enjoyable, informative and insightful. I've read most all of it. And as a British historian who admits to loving Americans and the U.S.A., he writes with perspective and objectivity that American authors can't have generally.

Here's the rub. Glaring errors of fact in a history book are unacceptable. I noticed two. Johnston didn't order a retreat on the second day of the Battle of Shiloh because he died on the first day. And the Green river in Wyoming isn't a tributary of the Sweetwater, being across South Pass and hence the Continental Divide.

As details, the factual errors don't effect the narrative or Keegan's conclusions but they cast doubt on the rest of the work. They stick in my head and won't go away. Whether caused by haste, poor editing or any other cause, they detract from the book and that is a shame.

Three stars might be overly generous, but I am a fan and a reader of History books rather than a Historian or professional literary critic, so three stars it is.

John Keegan was the Defence Editor of the Daily Telegraph and Britain's foremost military historian. The Reith Lecturer in 1998, he is the author of many bestselling books including The Face of Battle, Six Armies in Normandy, Battle at Sea, The Second World War, A History of Warfare (awarded the Duff Cooper Prize), Warpaths, The Battle for History, The First World War, and most recently, Intelligence in War. For many years John Keegan was the Senior Lecturer in Military History at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and he has been a Fellow of Princeton University and Delmas Distinguished Professor of History at Vassar. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He received the OBE in the Gulf War honours list, and was knighted in the Millennium honours list in 1999. John Keegan died in August 2012.