Throughout history, from Hannibal's crossing of the Alps to Rommel's desert warfare, military operations have succeeded or failed on the ability of commanders to incorporate environmental conditions into their tactics. In Battling the Elements, geographer Harold A. Winters and former U.S. Army officers Gerald E. Galloway Jr., William J. Reynolds, and David W.

Rhyne examine the connections between major battles in world history and their geographic components, revealing what role factors such as weather, climate, terrain, soil, and vegetation have played in combat.

Each chapter of Battling the Elements offers a detailed and engaging explanation of a specific environmental factor and then looks at several battles that highlight its effects on military operations. Battling the Elements details dozens of battles to illustrate the complex, diverse, and often capricious effect of physical geography on war without oversimplifying this relationship or implying that environmental factors predetermine the outcome of a battle.