Best recently read books:
1) The Naval War of 1812, or, The history of the United States Navy during the last war with Great Britain by Theodore Roosevelt. Fascinating account of naval warfare during War of 1812. Introduced me to a lot of unfamiliar naval terms, like 'had the weather vane.' History books don't talk about 1812 too much, it was enlightening to discover how important the naval battles were during that war, how insignificant most land battles were (perhaps that explains the dearth of info in most history books).
2) Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley with Ron Powers. Terrific account of fighting on Iwo Jima and what happened to the men who raised the flag on top of Suribachi in the now immortal photo.

Worst (most disappointing that is):
With the 41st Division in the Southwest Pacific : a foot soldier's story by Francis B. Catanzaro.
Hate to take a shot at a fellow vet, esp. one who had to endure the hardships of fighting in the Pacific (by the Army, not the Marines), but this one was very disappointing. From the book cover, I expected detailed descriptions of the hardships of fighting on those islands, got mostly a bunch of stats telling me how many American casualties, how many Japanese casualties.

Flags of Our Fathers was ten times better.

I would recommend The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze. It describes how many of Hitler's decisions concerning military strategy were driven by economic considerations. I found the author's discussion of why Hitler invaded the Soviet Union when he did to be particularly interesting. It is quite a long book, nearly 700 pages of text, but much valuable information, IMHO.

"A Time to Stand" by Walter Lord. Best book on the Alamo and Texas fight for Independence ever written!

Hello,

I was reading your blogs and thought you might be interested in taking a look at Ann Hagedorn's SAVAGE PEACE: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 (Simon & Schuster).

Terrorist-generated paranoia, racial unrest, immigration raids, government intrusion into the private lives of citizens, controversial forms of marriage, a contested U.S. intervention abroad, and hotly-debated scientific advances are issues that polarized our nation long before 2007. Acclaimed author and journalist Hagedorn offers a riveting account of the year in U.S. history that directly influenced and uncannily reflects modern-day controversies.

The Chicago Tribune calls it a fast-paced and engaging study..SAVAGE PEACE is a potent reminder of the fragility of civil liberties and the power of conspiratorial fantasies propated by true believers and opportunists alike during times of war and uncertainty. Hagedorn tells this important, complicated and often unsettling story well, conveying effectively the drama and intensity of the year's events as well as their contemporary and longer-term significance.

Check out her website www.savagepeace.com

Best,

Lee

Salerno, by Hugh Pond and A River Swift a River Deadly, by Blumenson. I do not agree with Blumenson by blaming General Walker for the Rapido disaster, rather both books show General Clark and General Keys as incompetent. Talk about some BRAVE soldiers being led to slaughter these books tell it all.

If you want to get mad at the Japs all over again read Flyboys, but its tuff to take.

Best Regards,

Steve

I really like Len Deighton for WWII ETO history. Deighton grew up in postwar Berlin. A lot of his sources are(were) former Wehrmacht servicemen. He has also done a lot of personal exploration around European battlefields and has a great sense of terrain.

The best thing about Deighton, though, is that he is such a wonderfully clear-minded thinker and writer. He brushes away hype and myth and uncovers the real dynamics and reasons for events (which is often much more interesting).

Blood, Tears, and Folly covers several major WWII campagins.
Blitzkreig covers events up to the defeat of France.
Fighter covers the Battle of Britain.
All are excellent.

Not a book.
Recently I watched a program on the History International Channel about the Battle of Waterloo. At the end of the show, the narrator said "this battle marked the beginning of 100 years of peace on the European Continent."
HUH????
I guess they never heard of the Franco/Prussian war.

quote:

Originally posted by gumbydammit:
Not a book.
Recently I watched a program on the History International Channel about the Battle of Waterloo. At the end of the show, the narrator said "this battle marked the beginning of 100 years of peace on the European Continent."
HUH????
I guess they never heard of the Franco/Prussian war.

The 100 years following the battle of Waterloo was a busy century, not as busy as the eighteenth, but hardly without wars.

Greek war of Independence (1821-27)
Belgian Revolution (1830)
Carlist Wars (Spain, 1833-76)
November Uprisings in Poland (1830-31)
Krakow Uprising in PolaND (1848)
January Uprising in Poland (1963-65)
Crimean War (1854-56)
Austro-Prussian War (1866)
Franco-Prussian War (1870-71)
Russo-Turkish War (1877-78)
Russian-Circassian War (1886) although one might argue that this was an Asian war
Russian Revolution of 1905 (1905)
First Balkan War (1912)
Second Balkan War (1913)

Technically, World War One (up to the summer of 1915) was within the 100 years following Waterloo, but we can give them two years.

THE RELIGION about the Knights of St John The Baptists who defended Malta in a siege in the 16th century against the Ottoman Turks that make the Alamo and Bataan look like nothing. The detail the author shows to what happened and what 16th century siege warfare was like in a historical novel is astonishing. With this book you know what it was really like and how cruel it was.

Jack E. Hammond

The recent best and worst books I have read are one in the same...

Invasion 1940
Without minimizing the bravery and dedication of the RAF in the Battle of Britain, the author shows that the outcome of this battle was not critical in the success of Sealion.
On the other hand, the book is at times, both simplistic and repetitive. Hence the best and worst rating.

Andrew Jackson Higgins and the Boats That Won World War II by Jerry E. Strahan

In the Introduction (and I'm paraphrasing)

"In 1943, the US Navy consisted of 17,096 ships, of this number 12,956 were designed by Andrew Jackson Higgins....THAT's 92% of the entire fleet. Of the 12,956, 8595 were built by Higgins Industries in New Orleans, LA"

While Stephen Ambrose was writing Eisenhower's biography, Ike said that if one person were responsible for winning WWII, it would be Andrew Jackson Higgins.

but have you ever heard of him? I'll bet not ....well maybe on a forum like this he's better known, but in general, he is unknown to the avg. citizen.

Book was WELL written. I couldn't put it down and read all night long.

Before Hurricane Katrina, there was a group of men attempting to build a Higgins Landing Craft from the plans. 1st they ran into funding problems and when they finally got that solved, the hurricane blew the damn thing away.

BTW, the D-day museum in New Orleans is built on the site of the old Higgins Industry factory.

as for Worst WWII book

First Heroes by Craig Nelson. (about the Doolittle Raiders)

I'm reading along about the Flying Tigers in China when Nelson tells me that some of the guys who were in the Hell's Angels squadron came back from WWII and formed the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang.

All of my alarms started going off at once. Think about it...a group of highly trained Fighter Pilots, Officers, Gentlemen, who would have been in their 30's or better in 1946 came back to the US, and formed a BIKER GANG? It just didn't sound right.

So I looked around and in 10 min. found out this wasn't true.

Doesn't ANYONE proof historical books for accuracy? What's and editor for anyway?

Nelson also told me that Halsey's nickname was not BULL but something else entirely (can't remember what it was off the top of my head.)

If you are looking for NON fiction, this isn't a book for you.

Lisa

From the brother of a "Navy Lifer Tin Can Sailor".

"The excitable, volatile Admiral vented his hatred for the Japanese throughout the war. The idea of destroying the Japanese nation filled his days and nights, and his habit of expressing these potent feelings publicly prompted the press to call him "Bull" Halsey".

Sgtleo

The lessons of Terror BY: Caleb Carr

Sorry but I can't remember the name but many years ago I read an autobiography by a German enlisted man who fought all the way through the Russian campaigns. It was unusual to me in that not only was it from the German point of view not one of the allies but it was from the common soldier's point of view not some general.

Tbere was one indelible description of the Russian landscape in the depth of winter==unrelieved white as far as the eye can see except for a line of ants disappearing into the horizon from both directions as soldier slog it on. Tanks, trucks, all sort of vehicles are literally frozen to the ground. Except in the far distance a larger ant appears rapidly coming toward the viewer. As it nears he sees that it is in fact a VW with an officer standing with his head above the roof yelling orders left and right. I can see this picture as if I were there right now.

Currently reading The Second World War: A Complete History (Revised Edition) by Martin Gilbert. My thoughts on this one are mixed but definitely lean more toward the negative than positive. The book vacillates between great detail on some events (the Holocaust and the Eastern Front) and barely a mention of other equally important events (the U.S. submarine campaign in the Pacific). There are also a number of factual and timeline errors which, IMO, cannot be laid simply to "printing error".

For example:

..Gilbert claims the Battle of the Coral Sea lasted four days, from May 2-6, 1942 when, in fact, it ran from May 4 (preliminary strikes) to May 8, with the main actions occurring on the 7th and 8th.

..In the three paragraphs Gilbert devotes to the Battle of Midway, he correctly discusses and names the four Japanese carriers destroyed in the first two paragraphs. In the last paragraph, however, he states "...the fact that three of the Japanese aircraft carriers sunk had been among the five which had taken part in the attack on Pearl Harbor".

..In discussing some of the early targets of the bombing campaign by the Eighth Air Force in late 1942, Gilbert asserts that "the Japanese were also beginning to feel the impact of air bombardment on their own cities" in the same timeframe.

There are more errors in the timeline of events (among others) as one progresses through the book so I can't help but wonder what the point was in even publishing a "revised edition".

Recommend you check out B.C. Streetabout military life on Okinawa in early postwar years. The book's available on amazon. It's amazing some of the parallels between military occupation then and now. Besides, it's a very entertaining story with romance, adventure, humor and tragedy--something for everyone. It's not a combat book unless count bar fights! I promise you, it's worth a look.

Currently reading Home of Home of the Infantry The History of Fort Benning. My daughter brought a signed copy addressed to me from (Richard Hyatt) Ft Benning, as a Christmas gift can't put it down. Significantly accurate and extremly enjoyable to read of the familar names, highly recommend!

Right up there with what my son brought back from Hawaii last Christmas, another addressed & signed copy from BG Jerome T. Hagen USMC; War In The Pacific America at War VOL 1, another must read.

Merry Christmas!

I'm about half way through "The Day of Battle" by Rick Atkinson which covers The Sicilian and Italian campaigns. Easily the equal of "An Army at Dawn" which earned him a Pullitzer. this is second book of his "Liberation Trilogy" about the ETO.

All
Currently resurrected a 1983 print of Supercarrie Story of the USS Kennedy med cruise in the 80s. The story has the Kennedy standing off Lebanon right after the USMC Barracks bombing. An embed did the book and named names. The anecdotes of life on a big deck are truly authentic. A good read and a memory jogger.
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quote:

THE RELIGION about the Knights of St John The Baptists who defended Malta in a siege in the 16th century against the Ottoman Turks that make the Alamo and Bataan look like nothing. The detail the author shows to what happened and what 16th century siege warfare was like in a historical novel is astonishing. With this book you know what it was really like and how cruel it was.

This review touched a mempory..
On our Med cruise in the early 70s we stopped at Malta for a port call. The bus trip to the beach that St Paul landed on, was a history trip indeed. We conversed with the Malta folks, about the German invasions, and no sooner than we covered the Second World War we were off to the war mentioned above. A bus trip of historians, who all recalled thier history as if it were today...or yesterday.
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