Everyone knows Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." This humorous and pithy book takes Murphy's Law further, applying it to military history and maxims, along with detailed illustrations from real battles from ancient history to modern warfare and lessons to be learned. Beginning with what should be an obvious observation ("You are not Superman") and ending with "The most dangerous thing on the battlefield is a 2nd Lieutenant equipped with a map and compass," Carr takes us on an educational and entertaining journey through the ages. He provides stories of the successes, failures and misadventures of military campaigns, experiments, sieges, wild inventions, famous last words, miscalculations, and other vicissitudes of war.