"The history of warfare cannot be fully understood without considering the technology of killing ... Lockhart tells the story of military technology from the Renaissance to the dawn of the atomic era --a five-hundred-year-long 'age of firepower' during which the evolution of weaponry transformed the conduct of warfare in the West ... The introduction of gunpowder weapons at the close of the Middle Ages made military technology the largest single factor shaping warfare's tactics, strategy, and logistics. Over the five centuries leading up to World War II, the art of war revolved around the ever-more-effective delivery of firepower, and the driving force of weapons development was the compulsion to make that possible. But for centuries, even as it became more effective, military weaponry remained simple and affordable enough that nearly any state could afford to equip a respectable army; weapons could be used and used again until they physically wore out. That all changed, very suddenly, around 1870"--