The author has established a solid reputation by co-authoring several great books on the boxer rebellion. Thus I had purchased this volume with very high expectations as to its contents.I was however disappointed by the text which was very choppy with some grammatical errors. I had the distinct feeling that the text was pre-written and then force-fitted into the Osprey format. If space was at a premium, then there was unnecessary duplication of information such as the order of battle for the forces, allied and Chinese in the text, repeated in a few tables.The face-saving grace of this book is that there were a few nice illustrations with one particularly compelling bird's eye view of the besieged Legation compound.In this series, an earlier Boxer rebellion book by Lynn Bodin is superior.