Lexington Books
Pages: 388
•
Trim: 6⅜ x 9
978-1-4985-7251-4 • Hardback • October 2019 • $140.00 • (£108.00)
978-1-4985-7252-1 • eBook • October 2019 • $126.00 • (£97.00)
Jamie H. Cockfield has taught history at Mercer University.
Chapter 1: The Training of a Russian Officer, 1853–1914
Chapter 2: The First Months of the Great War, 1914–1915
Chapter 3: Between Metal and Men: Near Disaster and Revitalization, May 1915–April 1916
Chapter 4: Brusilov Dons His Armor, April–May, 1916
Chapter 5: Brusilov’s Glorious Days, June–October
Chapter 6: A Winter of Despair, October 1916–March 1917
Chapter 7: The Spring of Hope, March–June 1917
Chapter 8: Descent into Darkness, June–August 1917
Chapter 9: When Your Mother is Sick…1917–1926
Cockfield goes a long way to demonstrate that Brusilov stood among the best of the World War I generals. . . Besides providing an informative biography on a great military leader, Cockfield’s book is a welcome addition to the literature on Russia’s Great War.
— The Russian Review
Thanks to half a lifetime’s meticulous research, Professor Cockfield has surpassed previous treatments to produce a sound modern biography of General Aleksei Alekseevich Brusilov. Among the Great War’s more successful higher-level commanders, Brusilov was at once inspiring, ingenious, atypical, unconventional, and—of course—controversial. As a Russian, he has also been an outlier in much of the western-oriented historiography of the conflict. Cockfield’s portrait of Brusilov redresses this deficiency while doing full justice to the general’s life and legacy. — Bruce W. Menning, The University of Kansas
Professor Cockfield quotes his subject, General Brusilov, as saying that technical means constitute only half of military success, the rest coming from proper training for troops and commanders’ effective leadership. In this study of the “Iron General,” Dr. Cockfield shows how, although a good biography relies on facts (and he supplies them here amply), the factual material requires elucidation, shaping, and interpretation through narrative skill, human understanding, and seasoned judgment. A master and tireless researcher in European military history, fully familiar with both Tsarist and Soviet Russia, he presents Brusilov in his time—the thinker and the man of action as one, devoted to his country and his men, confronting the tidal waves of the Great War and the Revolution. The account, at once personal and epic, will appeal to readers in their armchairs as well as historians of the period.— Catharine Savage Brosman, Tulane University