O'Sullivan offers a unique geographical look at military strategy and tactics, focusing on recent warfare and weighing the balance of advantage for combatants in different geographic settings. He surveys the global variety of physical habitats from a military viewpoint, provides a geography of war since 1945, and analyzes a selection of ancient and modern battles in developing a set of classical tactical ploys. Also explored are a broad range of modern weapons and tactics, guerrilla operations and urban warfare, and the details of the British Army/IRA conflict.