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Tanks are the ultimate embodiment of industrial-age warfare. In the popular imagination, they are both terrifying engines of destruction and powerful symbols of liberation. While technology has evolved relentlessly, the rise of drones, missiles and artificial intelligence has led many to predict the tank’s obsolescence.
Yet time and again, tanks have continued to shape, and be shaped by, battlefields around the world. From their introduction in 1916, through the Second World War and the tank battles of the 1990s Gulf conflicts, to the current war in Ukraine, these machines remain central to modern warfare.
In TANK, bestselling historian and former Royal Tank Regiment officer Mark Urban draws on wide-ranging accounts from soldiers, designers and politicians, from Winston Churchill to Volodymyr Zelensky, to tell the remarkable story of one of the most influential weapons in military history. Through ten of the most important tanks ever built, Urban traces the evolution of tank technology, beginning with the Mark IV, the first British tank deployed in large numbers during the First World War, and continuing through the T-34 and Tiger to the modern M1 Abrams, a product of massive American Cold War investment that remains in service today.
Officially supported by The Tank Museum and drawing on previously unseen archival sources, interviews and declassified documents, this is a compelling history of the vehicle that changed warfare forever.
Mark Urban is a writer and columnist for the Sunday Times, specializing in defense and foreign affairs. Until 2024, he was the Diplomatic Editor of BBC's Newsnight program. He formerly served in the British Army, both in the Royal Tank Regiment and in the Territorial Army. He is the author of several books, including Red Devils, Task Force Black (his deep-dive look at the SAS in the Iraq War, which was a Sunday Times number one bestseller) and The Skripal Files, a Sunday Times Best Politics Book of 2018.
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