I am a student currently in high school, looking for good suggestions when it comes to reliable books for my extended essay on Hannibal Barca and his military strategies. Task I have chosen is to take a closer look at his strategies and what made them work, and how this made him so successful. In the task, I need to have several good sources of information that I can quote and get information from.
Thanks in advance.
Hello! There happens to be tons of modern material on this subject despite deficiencies in the ancient sources. Here are my recommendations based on reliability and accessibility:
Lancel, Serge. Hannibal. Translated by Antonia Nevill. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. A very readable and fairly concise (224 pages) biography of Hannibal written by an archaeologist who worked at Carthage. Lancel stays pretty close to the ancient sources, so scholarly debate doesn't weigh down the narrative, but he's also witty, perceptive, and humane.
Lazenby, J. F. Hannibal's War. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. This is the standard military history of the Second Punic War, which tries its best to cover both the Carthaginian and Roman perspectives. It can be very dry at times and possibly confusing for anyone not familiar with ancient historiography.
Goldsworthy, Adrian. The Fall of Carthage. London: Phoenix, 2006. Originally published in 2000 as The Punic Wars. Goldsworthy is a military historian and covers all three Punic Wars from that perspective. He's definitely more readable than Lazenby.
Hoyos, Dexter. Hannibal: Rome's Greatest Enemy. Exeter: Bristol Phoenix Press, 2008. Honorable mention. This is the shortest (150 pages) and least detailed book on the list... but Hoyos probably knows more about Carthage than all the other authors combined. He includes an annotated bibliography. I'm hesitant to recommend his earlier work Hannibal's Dynasty (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2003), since it focuses mainly on Carthaginian politics (quite speculatively at that) and may seem too scholarly.
If you find all of them too daunting, I can also suggest some decent "popular" histories. On the other hand, if you would like go deeper, I can recommend excellent scholarly material. I hope you find this helpful! :D