Book Review: Tank by Mark Urban

When I'm asked to review books, they are usually written by tank historians for tank historians. They bristle with technical details, tables of organization, unit numbers, millimeters and kilograms, with some pages more footnotes than text and a thick heft bibliography that can be the size of a chapter of its own. This is not one of those books.

Mark Urban, a Sunday Times columnist and former RAC officer, is not a typical historian and didn't write a typical history book. While most of the books I deal with take a deep dive into a very narrow subject, Tank attempts to give an introduction to armoured warfare throughout the 20th century. The book is broken up into 10 chapters: Mark IV and Renault FT tanks of the First World War, T-34, Sherman and Tiger of the Second, and Centurion, T-64, Merkava, and Abrams tanks of the Cold War, spilling into the modern day. 

The story of each tank is not laid out as you would expect from most books, starting with design specifications, moving on to prototype trials, mass production, finally ending with the tank's combat career. Each chapter starts with the tanks already rolling into action. Once Urban hooks the reader, he pulls back to talking about the origins of the tank, its production history, and the advantages and disadvantages of the design, and how well the tank did the job that it was supposed to do. The second part of the title becomes important here. This book is not just about tanks, but also the men who fought in them. Every so often the author departs from the design and production timeline to jump back into the combat for another brief impression of what it was like to fight in the tank to keep things varied.

As a historian, I find the book lacking in some respects. There are no footnotes, endnotes, or even a bibliography. Urban references some books by name, including the recent The Panzers of Prokhorovka, and quotes from primary documents so it's obvious that a lot of research was put into this book. On one hand, I would have liked to see what it was in detail, on the other hand I realize that it doesn't really matter. This book wasn't written for people like me. The majority of my long time readers will probably find very little new material in this book. 

Tank serves as an ideal introduction to the history of armoured warfare. It's varied enough to go over the major tanks of the 20th century without lingering for too long. It gives just enough technical details for the reader to understand the key differences between the types of tanks without drowning the reader in tables and figures. Enough time is spent discussing logistics and strategy to give context before jumping back into the action. The narrative of each chapter flows well and the transitions between combat, design, production, and combat again happen very naturally.

This book makes for a very good starting point for someone just getting into the history of armoured warfare. If there's someone in your life who you want to understand what's the big deal about these tanks you like so much, you could do a lot worse than buying them a copy.

Tank by Mark Urban is available for preorder at the Tank Museum shop 

A review copy of Tank by Mark Urban was provided to me by Penguin Random House UK.