I Compared The Codex to My Old School Encyclopedia. Here's What Changed in 20 Years

The encyclopedia lived on the bottom shelf of my school library, a row of matching volumes with spines the color of weak tea. When I was twelve, a teacher mentioned the Battle of Cannae in passing, called it "the perfect battle," and moved on. So I went to the C volume, the way you go to a textbook: because you have to.

The entry was one short paragraph. A date. Two commanders. A casualty figure. A closing line about a decisive Carthaginian victory. It read like a form, not a story. I closed the book feeling like I'd been handed the final score of a game I never got to watch. School encyclopedias were built to be looked up, not read.

That picture is what The Codex of Military History is built around. It is a roughly 300-page illustrated encyclopedia of weapons, warriors and military strategy, drawn by Ukrainian artists in a Da Vinci-inspired style, and it gives you the helicopter view of how war unfolded. It is also explicit about what it is: not a glorification of war, but a study of how war shaped empires, technology, leadership and survival.

The first thing that changed is the vantage point. My school set ran A to Z, so one war lived in pieces: the commander under one letter, the weapon under another, the strategy under a third, each in a different volume. The Codex is built by era instead, six of them, from Early Weapons to War of Tomorrow. Weapons, warriors and strategy sit together, so you take in the whole sweep of a period at a glance.

The second thing is the pictures. In my school set they were small, gray and easy to skip. Here the illustration is the point: museum-quality artwork that shows you how it all looked, not just what it was called, and that you keep turning back to. It is a foil-stamped hardcover, larger than A4, with silver-gilded page edges and its own protective slipcase. It looks like something you keep.

Side by side, the two books almost seem to be made for different people. My school set was built for looking things up: you arrived with a question, found your paragraph and left. The Codex is built for wandering: you arrive with no question at all, and an hour later you are still reading.

The old set spoke in the voice of a form, all dates and casualty counts. This one tells you the interesting facts and the stories behind them, with the pictures doing half the talking. Ask yourself which of the two you would have opened on a Saturday when you were twelve.

Some practical notes, since I would have wanted them before ordering. Give it room.The book is larger than A4, about 14 × 10 inches (25 × 35 cm), so it belongs on a desk or a sturdy shelf, not in a bag. It is also built for browsing rather than one long read: you open it anywhere and follow whatever catches your eye. If what you want is one long narrative about a single war, a different book will suit you better.

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One more thing I learned after the book arrived. The Codex is illustrated by Ukrainian artists working across Kyiv, Lviv and smaller cities while the Russian invasion continued around them. The project is led by Vlad Khvyshchuk, and it began with a personal question: his young son Abel kept asking about knights, inventions and how the world worked, and Vlad started answering with drawings.

The studio's first book raised $508,241 from 5,327 backers in 44 days on Kickstarter and sold out its first two print runs. The Codex of Military History followed, with 4,645 backers pledging $506,870. Every copy sold supports the studio directly.I didn't buy it out of sympathy. I bought it for the pages. But knowing who drew them, and when, changed how I read them.