January 2010 reading?

New month, new year, new decade.

The Liri Valley: Canada's World War II Breakthrough to Rome excellent soldier view of the campaign. Lots of new sources but bigger picture is occasionally confused. Recommended.

Hadrian's Wall: just to continue a recent trend in Roman history.

Completed and both highly recommended...

- The Wolf: How One German Raider Terrorised Australia And The Southern Oceans In The First World War by Richard Guilliatt and Peter Hohnen
- BONNIE-SUE: A Marine Corps Helicopter Squadron in Vietnam by Marion F. Sturkey

For more on the Wolf and its ilk, look under the RAIDER tag in my collection...

Working on Command of the Ocean; it'll take awhile.

The Deniable Agent: Undercover in Afghanistan by Colin Berry I wouldn't cite it in an academic paper but a great book all the same. Author was in Afghanistan 02-03 buying back weapons systems sold to the Afghans in the 1980s. After an assassination attempt was thrown in jail and tortured.

Finished Rifles: Six Years by Mark Urban. Enjoyed it very much. Also Xerxes invades Greece by Herodotus. Next up is Experience of War: an anthology ed. by Robert Cowley.

And because it was lying around, checking out: The Civil War Handbook: How to Dress, Talk, Eat and Command like a Union Lieutenant

The Battle: A New History of Waterloo by Alessandro Barbero up to date scholarship with some new insights make this a must read.

Hadrian's Wall in the days of the Romans: continuing the Hadrian's Wall theme recently started.

Started Ambush Valley this morning.
Looks like an interesting collection of first-hand accounts centred around a single engagement.

Half way through the short (150 or so pages) War in European History.

Started The Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 for a non-Roman read.

The War for All the Oceans strange book. An introduction to Napoleonic naval warfare that describes terms like striking the colors" but at the same time is a daunting 560 pages. There were a few details I hadn't read anywhere else I'll be pulling books out of the bibliography to add to the wish list.

#13: Much of the oddness comes from it being a naval history of Britain rather than an institutional history of the Royal Navy; politics and social history being as important, if not more so, than more narrow military concerns.

14:That could be some of it. I do think they did underestimate the knowledge of military terminology by the general reader. After all were in a world of Hornblower and Patrick O'brien.

lol, nice shot jmnl! I'm bracing myself for another rereading of POB.

Just started Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, for the last year or so it was going to be the next book I read but kept getting put off.

A Military Revolution?: Military Change and European Society, 1550-1800 by Jeremy Black short booklet. Argues convincingly that if there was a "revolution" it was in the 18th century not the 17th.

#17 - A book that's been far too long on my wish list!
#18 - On military revolutions, another long standing book on my wish list is The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300-2050 edited by MacGregor Knox and Williamson Murray.

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Currently, I'm focusing on just two tomes...
- Vietnam: The Australian War by Paul Ham
- Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874-1945 by Carlo D'Este

Just started Revolt on the Tigris: the Al-Sadr uprising and the governing of Iraq
Account by British governor of his days in Al-Kut as a member of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Got recently, thanks rudel519, latvia in world war II
Since the authors background is similar to mine, I am entranced.

19: I'm aware of that book to. Hopefully two copies become available some day.:)

The Danger Tree: Memory, War and the Search for a Family's Past lovely writing about the authors ancestors. Three brothers were killed in WWI. Not exactly a source there's too many literary flourishes to give me confidence about that but still wonderful.

21: I've had my eye on Latvia in World War II for a while now. I'd like to hear your thoughts about it when you're done.

Half way through American Rifle. After reading Rose's Washington's Spies I was a little leery since in that book the narrative tended to meander at times, but American Rifle is excellent. I just finished the chapter "The Smokeless Revolution" and I think it's the best account I've ever read about the development of smokeless power. This is not a technical book, rather it's more of a narrative general history. Very well paced and structured. Highly recommended.

Just finished up Retreat from Gettysburg (A), a first-rate analysis of how tactical defeat was turned into strategic success, the narrowness of Gen. Meade's options, and a good narrative of the sheer misery of it all.

I have just recieved,
Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East (Cambridge Military Histories) David Stahel,
Rommel's Desert War: Waging World War II in North Africa, 1941-1943 (Cambridge Military Histories) Martin Kitchen and
Hitler's Panzer's by Dennis Showalter
All three look like good reads.

Reading Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Max Hastings

Just finished 73 North. Pretty good book, although more of a storytelling narrative than an in-depth analysis. The author, Dudley Pope, is also the author of the Lord Ramage novels and he does write with a sort of atmospheric style. Never the less, recommend for those who crave some good naval history.

In the last week I finished up Dynamite Fiend (B), essentially a tale of true crime with roots in the American Civil War, and The Command of the Ocean (A+), N.A.M. Rodger's magisterial interweaving of the social, political, and military factors on the path to the zenith of British naval power.

I'm the middle of Bell Ah-1 Cobra (Osprey Air Combat Series) by Mike Verier, one from the series of about twenty years ago. I had checked the LibraryThing series listings and found that I was missing one volume of the series, so I got a used one. Standard Osprey Air Combat book, 200 pages, lots of photos but a decent amount of text.

Severn's Saga: WWI in East Africa and
Cool Deliberate Courage: John Eager Howard in the American Revolution, a famous Marylander combat officer.

>29 Shrike58: For those interested in the British Navy, the BBC's new 4-part documentary AThe Empire of the Seas by Dan Snow is quite entertaining, even if Snow expressed more patriotic feelings than explanations. Mentioning Britain's geographic and demographic advantages might have helped. There is a reason why the UK produces sailors not Eddies the Eagle ...

My reading has been mostly TV triggered. In the fall, The Pillars of the Earth comes to the small screen (Hungary and Austria double as early England). Hopefully, Europe's tiny film budgets provide for more extras than the abysmal Napoleon mini-series with its five-soldier Imperial Guard.

The new Spartacus is just awful. Bad plot, bad effects - more 300 than history. Human bodies are pressurized raspberry juice containers and fighting is mostly an unrealistic you-hit-my-shield-I-hit-yours. The mistakes equal the body count. The Spartacus Osprey Campaign deals with everything but the campaigns (apart from a minor section). What's the best book on Spartacus' campaigns?

The long awaited Band of Brothers follow-up, The Pacific comes to HBO in spring. With the old breed is a moving testament to devoted service and humility. And to the necessity of the Geneva Convention. Having listened to Studs Terkel's interview of E.B. Sledge, my mind read his account of the battle of Okinawa in his melodic Southern drawl. I await a cheaper paperback issue of Helmet for my pillow (Sleeping on your helmet, is this even possible? Sledge more sensibly used his helmet as a stool.).

>25 Shrike58: The Army of the Potomac never understood the concept of corps manoeuvers (Napoleon's diamond). It preferred its corps stacked up in one place. An enterprising commander would not have ordered VI corps to Gettysburg but to a blockading position on the southern flank.

We in Canada are just about to get Spartacus the Series.Is is a as bad as you seem to say? Are there tie ins like; Spartacus deorderant or shampoo? Perhaps Sparticus tootrhpaste which gives you a killer smile. Sparticus cereal with a suitable toy on the bottom or maybe even Sparticus seamonkeys, just add water and you have your very own hoard. A Spartacus "world tour" t-shirt might do the trick. Think of all the possibilities. One might even try to sell Particus energy drinks just like Sparticus used to drink.

Spartacus:Blood and Sand is not history as Jc said. It is 300 gone amok. It is almost impossible to get an accurate portrayal of Spartacus.
That said I'm enjoying the series solely for the entertainment. :)

I saw the trailer where they were fighting with battleaxes...ugh!

The Spartacus mini-series appears to be total kitsch and a guilty pleasure at best.

Part way through Recon Scout. Pretty standard WW2 personal memoir. So far the most memorable item has been his experience as a convoy guard, watching Churchill get out of his limo and taking a leak, which the author describes in a bit more detail than necessary!

Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship by J. F. C. Fuller nothing much here that would be considered earth shattering today. More interesting as a piece of historiography than anything else.