 In general, you probably shouldn't do a biography about somebody if you really, really love them or really, really hate them. Hello everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense, and we are back with another edition of Tactical Book Review. Today's book is Scipio Africanus, Greater Than Napoleon by B.H. Lytle Hart. This book was written in the interwar period between the First World War and the Second World War, which kind of gives it an interesting perspective on some things. But B.H. Lytle Hart, this is the first of his books I've read. He's written several books on strategy and war stuff, but like I said, this is the first one of his that I have actually read, and this is a biography about Scipio Africanus. Scipio Africanus, if you don't know, is the general for the Romans during the Second Punic War against Carthage, against Hannibal. You've probably heard of him. And Scipio was the general for the Romans that eventually led them to victory over the Carthaginians, and he defeated Hannibal at the Battle of Zama. There's a whole long story involved in that, but that's in general who Scipio is, and this is just a biography about him. One of the things that drew me to this book is that it's a biography about a general, Scipio Africanus, who's very well known in his field, by a guy who writes strategy books to begin with, so a guy who writes about war and battle and strategy and tactics and whatever, writing about a general who he claims is the greatest general ever. So I thought that was going to be more interesting than it ended up being, to be honest. I guess I expected more kind of explanations of why he's so brilliant and why he was so great or whatever, but here's my main issue with this book and why I personally didn't end up liking it. I didn't end up liking it because whenever an author writes a book and he just loves the person he's writing about, it just comes across as too fanboyish and not enough substance, and there's just lots of gushing about how great this person is, and there's really not too much substance there. This is the second or third time I've experienced that in a biography where the author just absolutely loves the person they're writing about, and so they just kind of spend a lot of time writing like, fan fiction is the wrong word, but something like that where they're just gushing about how great they are all the time, and like I said, there's not a lot of like actual substance or facts about the person's life, and it can just, it kind of gets annoying. To be honest, I skipped the entire last chapter of this because I tried to read it, but it was just going on and on about how great Scipio is and trying to compare him to other generals and how much better he is in those other generals because of this thing and the other thing. At the end of the day, I will say this book did inspire my Toodalige and Blood series, which we've started on this channel recently, and I will also say that if I really want to learn more about Scipio africanus, I just need to go back and read the original sources. I need to read Plutarch and Livy and read about Scipio in their original works, right? Because that's really the only sources that we have to draw on for this stuff, and so it doesn't really seem like there's a lot of other information he pulls in here. Like, I don't know if we have this, but like letters of Scipio, right? Or just other data besides Plutarch and Livy. He just kind of takes Plutarch and Livy, who are ancient historians, and then, you know, tells some stories about that, and doesn't even do a lot of like battle analysis necessarily. So, in general, wasn't too enthused with this biography by BH Lytle Hart, and it's probably a skip. That being said, you should be reading biographies. We should be reading biographies about great tacticians, great generals, great leaders of the past, right? Because we read biographies about great generals, tacticians, leaders from the past to learn lessons and to avoid pitfalls, right? Usually, people like that that rise to this level of extreme greatness have some really just stunning attributes and some just glaring failures. And so, we can learn from that, and we can learn how to try to avoid those pitfalls, embrace those strengths, and kind of how you as a person and your personality fits into that, and what lessons you can draw from that and apply to your own leadership, even if it's just of your fire team. So, read biographies, maybe not this one. Hope that's helpful. Again, that is Scipio Africanus, greater than Napoleon by BH Lytle Hart. Do brave deeds, and endure.