May 2016 - current reading.

Finished Architect of Soviet Victory in World War II (A) yesterday evening, a very enlightening work dealing with the evolution of Soviet military theory and how this played out in relation to the social politics of the Red Army. It appears that Isserson was an extremely annoying and abrasive individual with very little sense that his lack of social skills could easily lead to his undoing, particularly considering the oft poisonous environment of the Red Army's officer corps, a body of men who were contesting the results of the Russo-Polish War until Stalin summarily ended that argument in his own inimitable fashion. The great irony for Isserson is that there is a sense that whatever his talents as a theorist he might not have been a particularly efficient military practitioner, though at this remove it'll always be hard to get at the truth.

I'm currently reading Teutoburg Forest AD 9 by Michael McNally.

A Hero to His Fighting Men: Nelson A. Miles, 1839-1925 ...this book follows Miles from the Civil War through the Indian wars to the Spanish American war. Informative for me since I've never really studied the Indian campaigns nor the Spanish-American war. The author intended this as a defense of Miles. However, I came away with a very ambivalent feeling.

Napoleon's Irish Legion, excellent study of life in one of Napoleon's foreign legions and its associated bureaucratic maneuvering.

Even in his own time he seems to have been considered a very sketchy character; a high level of competence yoked to a very abrasive & arrogant personality.

#5, exactly!

Finished up Eyeing the Red Storm (A) on the way into work. While the core of this book is an examination of the murky roots of satellite reconnaissance in the Cold War, it's also a case study of how Dwight Eisenhower went about controlling security policy during his administration.

Just finished The Secret Battle by A. P. Herbert , another incredible fictionalized memoir of British soldiers at Gallipoli and the Somme. His descriptions of the hellish conditions at Gallipoli really stay with you. And he devotes a lot of time to the soldier's internalized demons and fears as they conflict with the sense of duty to your country and fellow soldiers, and what it means to be brave. The courts-martial account in it, although fictionalized, is similar to some cases that actually did occur. The best account I've read on British courts-martials for desertion and other crimes in WWI is Blindfold and Alone , which analyzes the approximately 350 cases which did result in an execution, about 10% of the total cases for capitol offenses.

I've just started The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939-1945 by Max Hastings.

Just started: Australian Confederates.

The last relevant book of the month is going to be Battle Flight (A), an inclusive examination of Post-WWII British air defense hardware and the policies that mandated these systems. If you liked Gibson's parallel work on the V-Bomber Era you'll also like this volume.