I was very surprised when the material in the book did not live up to the title. In sum, the book presents the general history leading up to specific urban battles like the battle for Warsaw in 1944 and the battle for Budapest in 1956. However, each chapter barely scratches the surface of the subject matter. For example, the chapter on the war in Northern Ireland hardly does that complex conflict justice. There is no discussion of the informant war, the assassination methodologies employed, the importance of forensics science, or even basic IRA tactics employed.



Where is the in-depth analysis of modern urban guerrilla warfare techniques like urban sniping (used so extensively in Chechnya), or the use of IEDs (which made leaps and bounds in Northern Ireland), or the employment of car bombs (used to such great effect in Iraq), or the effects of kidnapping/hostage takings (that once made Colombia the most dangerous country in the world)?



The author failed to address the fundamentals of modern urban guerrilla warfare, the reader gets a superficial understanding of the subject at best (in a book that is only 165 pages long and only has 21 pages that actually address the title), and some of the most important, relevant urban guerrilla wars are not even mentioned (like the war in Iraq and the PLO's war against Israel).



The most painful part of the book is the final chapter where the author summarizes the previous chapters which are themselves summaries of the battles. Incredibly, the author makes the final conclusion that his best advice to the U.S. military is to avoid urban guerrilla battles altogether. Clearly, the author is an academic with no personal experience in urban guerrilla warfare and has rushed this work into print as opposed really diving into this fascinating subject.

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