In 1891 Count Alfred von Schlieffen (1833-1913) was thrust into the position of Chief of Germany's Great General Staff. He was given an impossible task: figure out how to win a war on two fronts in which Germany would be outnumbered and outgunned. Long after his retirement in 1905, his efforts would define the German strategy used at the onset of the First World War and bear his name: The Schlieffen Plan.

But Schlieffen's problem remained: how does an army win against a numerically superior foe? After his retirement, he thought he might have found the answer - Cannae, the 216 BCE battle in which Hannibal won an improbable victory against the Romans. The result was Schlieffen's Cannae studies, in which he looks at the Battle of Cannae, and then explores how efforts at creating a new "Cannae" fared across modern history, from the wars of Frederick the Great to Napoleon to the German Wars of Unification and the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War.

This new edition is presented with over a hundred restored maps reproduced in colour and integrated into the text, and a new foreword by independent military historian Robert B. Marks taking a fresh look at Schlieffen and Cannae's place in military history.