"Chronicling the creation and evolution of the tank, Wright takes us through war zones and battlefields - from the tank's infancy during the First World War and the Russian Revolution through World War II, the Six Day War, and the Gulf War. He interviews soldiers who have survived the extremes of combat and tours factories and military bases around the world, including the mind-boggling U.S. Army Armor Center at Fort Knox, where the tank is now being redesigned for the coming era of digitized virtual warfare." But Tank is not a conventional work of military history, for the tank has always been more than just the sum of its mechanical parts. Rather than focusing solely on the tank's evolving strategic role and its transformation of the concept of the battlefield, Wright concentrates on images and impressions of the tank and its impact on the general public. He investigates the symbolic life of a machine that was destined to become a dance (the "Tanko"), a song, a magical spell, a fund-raising device, even a film star. And it is from this decidedly nonmilitary point of view that Wright shows how the tank has become one of the icons of a century's brutality, notorious for its association with the repression of civilian populations: Prague in 1968, Chile in 1973, Tiananmen Square in 1989.