New Reading - March 2016

Looks like I'm first up with War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 (A). I'm a little advanced for this book in terms of my knowledge base but Megargee does a fine job of showing how the attitudes of the German officer corps and the Nazi Party interlocked and that the legend of a decent and correct military is merely a legend.

I keep coming close but haven't bought it yet!

Finished a very enjoyable Defending the Island: From Caesar to the Armada by Norman Longmate.

I've begun Medieval Chinese Warfare, by Graff. Seems promising this far.

Just finished and enjoyed The Road to Khartoum. a Life of General Charles Gordon by Charles Chenevix Trench .

Finished Firepower: Weapons Effectiveness on the Battlefield, 1630-1850 by B. P. Hughes. Rather dull :(

Earlier this month I finished Her Privates We by Frederic Manning , an incredibly well-written fictionalized memoir of a British soldier in WWI. The battlefield descriptions are good enough to be considered literature, yet weren't dull like the literature I had to read in high school ;-) . Highly recommended.

FYI Rudel: The Middle Parts of Fortune: His subsequent experience in the army and in the appalling trench warfare at the Somme and at Ancre informed his great novel The Middle Parts of Fortune, which was published anonymously in 1929. Stripped of the profanities of Manning’s ‘fine fuckin' mob’ of soldiers, an expurgated edition appeared in 1930 under the title Her Privates We.

Thanks to your review I'm ordering Middle Parts.

#8 - Hi A, I ordered Middle Parts myself right after I finished Her Privates We and then gave Privates to a friend.

A couple of disappointments to report. One, Jackson's Sword: The Army Officer Corps on the American Frontier, 1810-1821 seeks to modernize our understanding of the role of the professional officer in the rising Jacksonian Era but I basically found it to be unreadable; in a word, prolix. Also, Hungary in World War II (B-), while decent enough, seems to be too bland since current political developments in Hungary make it clear that too many people still refuse to understand that Greater Hungary is not coming back.

I've started The Jacobite Rebellion 1745-46 by Gregory Fremont-Barnes, another Osprey Campaign volume.

#7, finished The Middle Parts of Fortune, thanks again Rudel!! Great book.

#12, glad you liked it A!!!!

13, you'd be reading along and them he would really shock you with just an incredible passage. He was quite an observer. Wish he'd written more.

I've just finished The Battleship Book by Robert M. Farley. It's a fairly good book and a pretty easy read, on the exact subject you'd expect from the title. The touchstone for the title links to Sink the Bismarck by C. S. Forester for some strange reason (Farley's book doesn't even come up as an "others" option), but you can link to the book from the author page.

Needham, The Gunpowder Epic, about gunpowder's origins in China.

>15 Jestak:

When touchstones are being touchy, you can force them to point to the right work by putting the work number followed by two colons before the title inside the brackets. That way it'll point to the work with that number, and won't try to match the title. (The work number is the number following /work/ in the url for a work page - note that there's an additional book number later in the url in some cases that you shouldn't use.)

>16 AndreasJ: Thanks for the tip.

Finished a very interesting Shenandoah Saga: A Narrative of the U.S. Navy's Pioneering Large Rigid Airships by Thom Hook.

I'm now reading The Battles for Spotsylvania Court House and the Road to Yellow Tavern by Gordon Rhea, the second volume in his Overland Campaign series.

19, great series!