The Battle of Lepanto was a struggle for control of the Mediterranean between the Holy League, bringing together the Papal States, Spain and the Republic of Venice, and the mighty Ottoman Empire. This 1571 conflict remains one of the largest naval battles of all time, and was a decisive moment in European history. The unexpected victory of the Holy League put an end to...
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The Battle of Marathon in 490 BC brought the first Greco-Persian War to a close and put a stop to the Persian king Darius I's attempt to extend his hegemony to the Aegean Sea and mainland Greece. Thanks to the courage and fighting skills of the Greek hoplites, who risked their lives to defend their land and maintain their independence, the Persian...
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The Battle of Stalingrad was one of the major battles of the Second World War, and saw the German Wehrmacht and Stalin's Red Army fight savagely, often in close quarters, for control of the city. The combat also involved civilians and was unprecedented in its scale; the Battle of Stalingrad is now widely regarded as one of the largest and bloodiest battles in history. It marked...
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The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest campaign of the Second World War, and mobilized extraordinary numbers of men and material on both the Allied and Axis sides. The battle was of major strategic significance: control of the seas would have allowed the Germans to bring Britain to its knees by preventing it from receiving supplies from the USA and its...
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The Battle of the Bulge began in late 1944 with the last major German offensive of the Second World War. Following the Normandy landings earlier that year, the German army was in a weakened state, so this offensive was an attempt to cripple the Allied armies by dividing them and cutting off their supplies. Although the Allies were initially caught by...
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The Battle of the Marne was one of the earliest battles in the First World War, and ended in a decisive victory for the Allies on the Western Front. Prior to this battle, German troops had been advancing relentlessly across Western Europe, sweeping through France and Belgium in spite of the latter's neutrality. This all changed with the counter-attack by British and...
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The Battle of Thermopylae pitted the Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, against the mighty Persian Empire under Xerxes I as Xerxes' army attempted to invade mainland Greece. Although the battle ended in victory for the Persians, the heroic resistance of Leonidas' 300 Spartans as they fought to the death to defend their land captured the European imagination and...
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The Battle of Tours (also known as the Battle of Poitiers) in 732 marked a definitive end to Muslim expansion in the West and symbolized the decline of the powerful Umayyad Caliphate, which had come to dominate much of the Mediterranean over the course of the previous century. Forces under the control of the celebrated miltary leader Charles Martel were able to...
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The Battle of Verdun was one of the most significant engagements of the First World War, and is widely recognized as one of the most brutal and costly battles in history. Like many of the battles in the four-year war of attrition, it was fought largely through trench warfare, with devastating human and material losses. Indeed, many historians now agree that...
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The decisive victory of the forces of the Seventh Coalition at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 put a stop to Napoleon Bonaparte's military ambitions, marked the end of the Hundred Days and saw the French emperor exiled to the island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. The battle had major consequences across Europe: it marked a significant decline of French...
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Understand the essentials of the BCG growth-share matrix (also known as the product portfolio matrix, portfolio diagram and Boston Consulting Group analysis) in just 50 minutes with this practical and concise book. The BCG growth-share matrix is a powerful strategic tool which allows managers to identify the stars, cash cows, question marks and dogs in their domain of activity, thus enabling them to...
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There is arguably no group that has had as much of an influence on modern pop and rock music as the Beatles. The Liverpool-born band, made up of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, burst onto the scene in the early 1960s and inspired such passionate devotion that the fervor surrounding them was dubbed “Beatlemania” by the...
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