Posted on 11/09/2013 1:06:18 PM PST by frankenMonkey
Max Hastings has written extensively about WWII various theaters. His works were to me, very readable and engrossing. Maybe a first book of his to read would be “INFERNO,” The world at war, 1939 - 1945.
2nd on The March Up, excellent book.
Dang, I was coug’s co-worker for a decade and I had no idea that crazy cracker could even read! ;)
It might be instructive to also read about little-known wars, at least as I was taught.
I think the Russo-Japanese War, Crimean War and others should be part of anyone’s study.
History of WWII by Keegan
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer
An American Ceasar by Manchester
Those three will give you a pretty good overview of WWII.
“Delivered from Evil” and “Helmet for my Pillow”, both by Robert Leckie. The former is a general history, the latter Leckie’s personal war memoir (one of the books used as the basis for The Pacific miniseries.
An excellent book about the Korean War is “The Forgotten War: America in Korea 1950-1953” by Clay Blair.
Clay Blair’s “Silent Victory” is a good account of our WWII submarine warfare.
“At Dawn We Slept” by Gordon Prange is an excellent book about Pearl Harbor.
“Miracle at Midway” by Gordon Prange is an equally excellent book about the Battle of Midway.
The Second World War by Winston Churchill. Six volumes. Volumes 2-6 have a lot of US military history in them. They are not to be missed!
Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James Hornfischer
American Sniper by Cris Kyle.
Goodby Darkness by William Manchester.
Thunder Below! by Rear Admiral Eugene B. Fluckey
He was the commanding officer of the U.S.S. BARB SSN 220.
His sailors were the only U.S. military personnel to ever land on mainland Japan, when they sabotaged a coastal railway. He even mounted rocket launchers topside and attacked targets on land. He planted the seeds about how submarines will be used in the future.
The Second World War by Winston Churchill. Six volumes. Volumes 2-6 have a lot of US military history in them. They are not to be missed! To paraphrase Churchill, he famously said that his part in WWII would be remembered as laudable, because he was going to write it.
Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James Hornfischer
American Sniper by Cris Kyle.
Goodby Darkness by William Manchester.
>>It might be instructive to also read about little-known wars, at least as I was taught.
Orwell’s (yes, that Orwell) Homage to Catalonia is very interesting, both militarily and politically. Covers his time in Spain fighting with the Anarchists during the Spanish Civil War. Not very long, a quick read.
bump
Flags of Our Fathers by James Brady. An incredibly realistic and heart wrenching account of the assault on Iwo Jima.
Flags of Our Fathers by James Brady. An incredibly realistic and heart wrenching account of the assault on Iwo Jima.
Operation Drumbeat. This is a MUST.
I also like a multi-volume encyclopedia called the Marshall Cavendish Illustrated Encyclopedia of World War II. It can often be found cheap on ebay. Also, the older editions of the American Heritage books on WWI and WWII are good, written before political correctness crept in.
Earlier this year, i also read and enjoyed Carlo D’este’s Patton: A Genius for War.
I can’t read. I just have people read me book titles that sound cool.
WWII sumbarine service, Sculpin 191. You can pull it up by doing a google. Great book: Submarine Diary: The Silent Stalking of Japan by Corwin Mendenhall.
Like Homer said, you can certainly find some very good books in my own library that I have posted on my profile page. You will really find all types on this page. Some of them are written by left wing lunatic fringe types (ie. Tim Weiner, Bruce Cummings), but I would say that it is still important to have a few of these types of books if you are going to make a serious study on military historical events.
The key to any of the readings is that you understand that nothing written is completely factual. Everyone would love to be able to put together Rankian style true histories, but it is just impossible to do this. Primary source material is never error free, biases slip into the reporting and re-reporting of events. Secondary sources amplify this and in the end you find yourself in a position where your goal is to give the best representation of the events that you can, but realize that it is only a representation.
Take Tim Weiner’s book Legacy of Ashes. It is chock full of things the CIA did wrong from its inception to 9-11. A lot of the mistakes that Weiner examines in this book did in fact happen. However, this is Weiner’s representation of those events and so it becomes exaggerated. He if very careful to not mention any of the successes that occurred over that same time frame. The significance of some of the errors committed are overstated. To you and me this makes this book liberal trash. It is just a politically motivated bash the CIA writing. But as I said, there are still some real historical realities in it. What that means is that it does have value, as long as you don’t cling to it as gospel truth and understand the motivations of the author who wrote it.
Let me know what aspects of military events you are most interested in and I’ll come up with a short list of books for you. Are you more interested in Operational histories? The politics of warfare? Overall general military histories? Logistics, homefront, you get the idea.
Coug.
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