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DIMITRI'S 50 BOOKS READ IN 2017
58.
by
Adam ZamoyskiFinish Date: 26 June 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: A
Review: The court-sanctioned art of Ingrès and David, together with the unmistakably resplendent dress uniforms, have given Napoleonic campaigns a contemporary luster that continues to dazzle us two centuries on.
The 1812 invasion of Russia is gilded with an extra layer of pathos (in the demise of the Grande Armée) and patriotism (in the Tolstoyesque Russian historiography). Zamoyski strips some of it away through the drawings and engravings made in situ . Here the artillery crews push their caissons struggle through the mud, cacked up to the loins. His use of diaries and memoirs also reveal that deprivation was not confined to the retreat. The logistical demands of an army 400.000 strong exceeded its capacity to live of the Russian lands, to the point where a veteran recalls the taste of horse urine drunk from ruts in the road.
The Borodino battlefield – its lethality in statistics unsurpassed until the Great War of the next century – is likewise laid bare and bloody. Looking at it within the wider context of the military campaign from the Russian side, it is striking how cautious the commanders were to preserve their armies to fight another day, against better odds. Did the Berezina crossing finally offer them?
Conversely, Napoleon is an eternal optimist; the fact that fair weather held until his retreat from Moscow was well under way had much to do with it. Hereafter, attrition by hypothermia or Cossack still didn’t restore the balance between numbers and provisions: hunger haunted the French back to their starting points in Poland and into the Baltics.
The darkest shade of war, as usual, colours the civilian experience. Dead babies litter the retreat, from a starved and frozen trio in an abandoned peasant hut to a cantinière and her newborn that disappear in the icy river. Just as depressing is the fate of the French wounded left behind in hospitals along the route, dying from thirst and medical neglect on a bed of straw and maggots. On a bright note in veteran’s recollections, one of the pregnant camp followers’ son made it to France and served under the colours in the 1820’s.
59.
byMark Healy(no photo)Finish Date: 29 June 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: B-
Review: Buy this Cannae and you get the rest of Hannibal's threesome of annihilation battles against the Roman legions in Northern Italy for free, with a century's worth of debate over his Alps traverse route summed up in a nice multicolour map. The artwork, battle maps and illustrations compliment the text. This could easily be used on an introduction level in university.
60.
by
Stephen E. AmbroseFinish Date: 30 June 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: D
Review: How many historians does it take to write a bad book that translates into a great TV series ?
While the deeds on Easy Company, encompassing the most famous American battles in the ETO, are a goldmine, mr. Ambrose fails to preserve the thrill in print. The participants don't come to life. Neither does he give more insight into what HBO had to leave out. What it has instead in abundance is an overkill of American gung-ho.
Does it do anything right ? Two things, perhaps.
People go in and out of focus as they are killed or transferred. There is hardly a 'main cast' that is in the thick of the fighting from Normandy to Berchtesgaden.
Secondly, it shows that even the great WWII was ultimately only a few years out of a human lifespan of 70, albeit influential ones. Not everyone stayed in the Army or pursued a succesful civilian career while in touch through Veteran's associations.
There is no Greatest Generation. Only great people within a generation that took part in a large war. And all the losers and assholes great people share every generation with as well as a draft. And yes, that captain Sobel was one of those.
JULY61.
by
Chuck PalahniukFinish Date: 1 July 2017
Genre: social satire
Rating: A
Review: Palahniuk would probably love to go mano a mano with De La Montagne. Because the man can prove Tyler Durden wrong. Self-improvement beats self-destruction. Il faut cultiver notre Jardin , not Trust in Tyler.
Both book and movie struck the Angry Young Man chord perfectly : out of college & into the white-collar workforce for a few years.
It did not make me join a Fight Club or blow up a bank. It did get me in a second gear where the copyright agreement screen of a DVD is the perfect time to tidy something or get a drink.
Or better yet, get out of the house with friends. I wake up in London. Get a workout, not for Calvin Klein but for my health and the heavy lifting capacities ruined by a desk job. I wake up in Izmir. Doesn't our narrator have friends to get him out of his IKEA bunker ? Hasn't he ever tried to sleep after a good run ? I wake up in Edinburgh. Doesn't he have hobbies besides late night TV commercials ? I wake up in Athens. Doesn't he READ on those plane flights ? I wake up in Rome. Doesn't he take vacations on his decent salary ? I wake up in San Francisco. Doesn't he date, online if necessary ? I wake up in Izmir.
Fight Club speaks to me with two voices. Don't be a 1% wannabe. Don't be a 1% on the other end of the social spectrum, either. Curse everything down from your couch and that's where you'll grow small until you're angry enough to fight the whole world. I've been in that black hole.
Nihilism and self-destruction are expressions of a critical mind, but not optimal. Self-improvement does not exclude non-conformism. OCCUPY doesn't render immaterial happiness impossible. Basic materialism doesn't necessitate a rockstar obsession.
62.
byHenrik O. Lunde(no photo)Finish Date: 5 July 2017
Genre: military history
rating: D
Review: Suffice it to say Finland got back what it wanted by autumn '41, more or less poised along its 1939 borders and on a line between the Gulf and the White Sea, far enough from Leningrad not to piss off the Russians even more.
Consequently, the German commanders could lead a horse to water, but not a Finnish corps to Murmansk. All was quiet on the Finnish front after spring '42, except light pushes to Leningrad.
Operation Bagration shook Finland awake from entrenched slumber into a tightrope game: trick Germany into taking over the front, while opening peace talks with the USSR. The most incredible thing is Mannerheim pulled it off with an armistice on 19 September 1944. Germany knew it was too weak to retaliate against a defective ally,
Two thirds in, I was bored to death with this book. The fight is as passive as the Western Front in the popular imagination and the tone is dry. I suspect Lunde's unfamiliarity with both Finnish and Russian is to blame after all.
Nothing on the ground: no sneaking through 7 feet of snow to encircle a Russian outpost, no frosty bayonet charges. A recollection from one of those Finnish border trappers involved in anti-partisan hunts would read like the most dangerous game. Or the recollection of a hapless Finnish veteran of WWI that witnessed the red storm of steel on the first day of operation Bagration.
63.
byAlison Plowden(no photo)Finish Date: 8 July 2017
Genre: British history
Rating: B-
Review: Originally published in the '70's but still useful for the Tudor novice to link up the big figures, Henry and Elisabeth, within the dynasty and its parvenu origins.
64.
by William Leith(no photo)Finish Date: 10 July 2017
Genre: autobiography
Rating: B-
Review: A NY gluton ... with a mild form of the psychological luggage that binge-eaters carry ? He never truly reveals his inner demons, only his boarding school reminisences provide meaningful hints, as does his passive-aggresive smoker girlfriend. Anyway, a gluton becomes an Atkins apostle becomes a moderate, balanced eater.
His journey passes through the naked underbelly of the food industry into the office of Dr. Atkins himself shortly before his heart gave up on him and out to... where ? Parts of this self-discovery feel like badly charted detours into pills, psychiatry and alcohol-fueled stripclub traumas.
Journalist Leigh presents us with a straight flush, but he also uses a sleight of hand to mask any cards we're not allowed to look into. It deludes what could've been a highly personal yet well-informed confession. As it stands, I want a plate of steak and veggies while I read. Followed by chocolate chip cookies.
65.
by
Brian PosehnFinish Date: 11 July 2017
Genre: comics
Rating: A-
Review: This omnibus profits from memorable sidekicks. the necromancer and the ghost of Benjamin Franklin. A cyborg S.H.I.E.L.D agent. Dracula's betrothed, all over the second half.
The situations they find themselves in are sometimes downright silly, with only Deadpool's inpertubable attitude towards the absurd. Luckily, these are far and few between, with groovy 70's flashbacks seperating the story arcs.
The Junge mysantrophy of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly cycle begs to be made into a Ryan Reynolds sequel. Even he couldn't get the Dead Presidents right, as much as I enjoyed the White House Trivia Pursuit jokes.
66.
by Howard Gerrard(no photo)Finish Date: 11 July 2017
Genre: military history
Rating : B
Review: The biggest thing it has going for it is the attention to the French side of operations, together with a light de-mythologising of the German attack, which was short on ideas. Nevertheless, the traditional points of dispute, that is the contribution of the Luftwaffe & Hitler's order for a tank stop, aren't settled clearly enough...the supplements (maps; further reading) are excellent.
67.
by
Anke WautersFinish Date: 11 July 2017
Genre: autobiography
Rating : D
Review: Based upon a 2009 blog post by the same author, "Fat. Ugly. Broad." is supposed to be a succesful attack upon society's body-shaming towards women. Instead, it gets stuck in generic generalties. Neither do we learn anything about Wauter's attempts at self-improvement. My review is visibly in the minority amidst the 4-5 stars given by women, but I insist; what have you done in order to not be your book's title ?
68.
by
Ian KershawFinish Date: 15 July 2017
Genre: biography
Rating: A-
Review: You've read all these facts about Adolf Hitler before and there may be more analysed speeches than anecdotes about his favorite foods, but few authors could've melted 30.000 books on the subject (by the Library of Congress index) into one size. The amount of integrated German-language scholarship, indispensible to the subject, is equally staggering.
It doubles as an eagle-eye view of WWII, alltough it casts about less as fortunes turn at Stalingrad and retreats into a fantasy world that shrinks to a bunker.
In terms of psychoanalysis, the main points are there: the fixed personality of a gambler who interprets luck as providence when his uncanny ability to manipulate people or audacious tactics come up short. A mysantropic who, as the apocalyptic consequences of his failiures came home to roost, wanted to annihilate his entire country and people with him.
Did Hitler have a historical mission? Yes. In retrospect. As the ultimate "it can happen [here] again [now].
To be read without chewing every phrase. If not it will take you a year, chapter by chapter.
69.
by
Stephen KingFinish Date: 15 July 2017
Genre: horror
Rating: B
Review: Do we need the unabridged version? The real King fans do, I don't; upon second reading I zigzag through dozens of pages to get to the good stuff: the helplessness of childhood fears.
Pennywise the Clown is scary enough in default form (clown make-up was originally designed to be scary, period). but it is really the notion of Your Personal Worst Fear taking shape before your eyes with nowhere to run that makes this one of King's Opi Magnae.
I've mentioned before that King would make a great popular historian; here also, his once-upon-a-time stories about Derry's bi-generational murder cycle rise above most of the text set in the present (1980's).
70.
by
Jeff LindsayFinish Date: 20 July 2017
Genre: dark comedy
Rating: C-
Review: Dexter and Cannibals ? It should have worked together better than this. The novel equivalent of a mediocre TV episode where Dexter barely gets to kill someone and the plot makes more sudden twists than a F1 track on crack. On the other hand, the storyline between Deborah & her ex-Black Op boyfriend would've made a fine foundation to use in that hated season 8.
71.
by
Hugh Sebag-MontefioreFinish Date: 24 July 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: A-
Review: It's no walk on the beach to give Hugh his due now that there's the movie Dunkirk to compare him to.
He gives us not just Dunkirk! He gives us the entire 1940 campaign! From archives on both sides of the Meuse. The Mechelen Affair taking of the 'impregnable' fortress of Eben-Emeal are particularly done in beautiful detail thanks to newly uncovered material. The fever of impending defeat among the Allied High Command is less hot than the victory fever of Edwin Rommel as he races ahead of the order to halt the Panzers. Hitler intervened in this manner several times in the course of the campaign in sudden fear of losing his preciously husbanded armour to a cut-off.
Few such counterattacks materialized and none succeeded, but that doesn't mean the French Army and BEF were always on the run. Ye ol' map fails to convey the blood its unstoppable arrows are painted with. The anxiety is palable among German recollections when a stealthy river crossing suddenly turned contested. For all the legendary Luftwaffe air supremacy and scything Blitzkrieg, a lot of bitter fighting marked the river-by-river jump between lines of resistance. The wealth of first-hand accounts is peppered with Lewis gun bullets and shrapnel from Sedan to Arras.
It is also stained with SS atrocities, such as the Totenkopf's at Le Paradis, that call bull on the theory that such massacres were confined to the Normandy campaign and beyond under the "dehumanizing" influence of SS service on the Russian Front. Their hands were red by the time the tanks made several general stops in front of the marshy lowlands near the North-French coast, not only by order of the Führer but by their generals also, who preferred to infiltrate such terrain by infantry.
So what about Dunkirk ? Honestly, Dunkirk has more Dunkirk in it. The RAF remains too hidden behind the greasy clouds of burning oil, the prevalence of passenger ships and military vessels in the evacuation over those glory-hogging "Little Ships" is too faint and we don't spend enough time shuffling along the sands as it is
72.
by
Alan MooreFinish Date: 26 July 2017
Genre: dystopian graphic novel
Rating: B
Review: Alan Moore reminds me of a reverse Philip K. Dick. The latter's drug-fueled SF often translated better to the screen than to the page. Moore delivers strong stories all along the line, but this time the illustrations let down the story.
Movie comparisons are inevitable: mid-20's Evy working for the BBC as opposed to 16-year old Evy as an amateur prostitute ? Protero being mentally destroyed rather than physically murdered by burning the one thing he cares about in life ? Yes, the source material has darker tones than the movie version... all tough Protero's demise is too Vaudeville to be taken seriously on-screen.. but V as a protagonist doesn't strike me as particularly more ruthless than Weaving portrays him. Also, Matrix-style knife vs. gun fights are in keeping with the novel that cannot render them graphically within the confines of a panel.
a note on my july posts Sorry I lagged behind so much. Wanted to catch up before June turns into August. If military history is not your cup of tea, there's other stuff mixed in this month !
AUGUST 73.
by
Donald F. FeatherstoneFinish Date: 1 August 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: A-
Review: Osprey in the early 1990 's was still trying to find its feet with the new campaign series: the 90 page format didn't sit well with such famous but large-scale battles as Normandy or the Ardennes. More contained affairs, tough, worked out well, especially when given to authors with a professional knowledge of the topic.
Featherstone had already written monographs on Victorian colonial warfare when David Chandler wheeled him in to write a trilogy on the conquest of British Egypt & the Sudan (1882-1898) of which this is the middle part.
The politics at the genesis of the campaign are presented with great clarity and insight into the Mahdi Rebellion as we call it from the POV of the vanquished. The weaponry data are tailored to their effects and defects in the field, rather than just lised from a manual.
One critical note: the illustrations commentary. It is never indicated whether any come from the author's collection, nor are they checked for inaccuracies. Ian Knight, in his numerous Ospreys and books dealing with the Zulu War, was far more diligent with his late-Victorian prints, published less than a decade before Khartoum.
I am a big fan of the Osprey Campaign series, especially the maps.
Betsy wrote: "I am a big fan of the Osprey Campaign series, especially the maps."Don't go digital with Osprey, their e-maps (& even the colour plates) often are reported as blurred.
I have quite a few of the paperback books in my collection, especially ACW, WWI and WWII, and Napoleonic battles.
Congratulations on having read 50 and more books! :)
Mod
This is how it is supposed to look.
by Mark Healy (no photo)
by
Donald F. FeatherstoneHere is the standard which is posted on the site:
Number for the book - only on this thread, period, blank space, citation which is the book cover, blank space, the word by, blank space, the author's photo, the author's link - if there is no author's photo - then the author's link after the space and then a blank space and (no photo).
74.
by
Harlan EllisonFinish Date: 7 August 2017
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: A
Review: A masterful allegory, albeit a fatalistic one, that resonates with every comuter in the world. The 60's Hugo awards housed some prophecies that only became more serious in the age of social media.
75.
by
Philip K. DickFinish Date: 7 August 2017
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: C-
Review: It's not unusual for a short story to be a one-trick pony, but you can see this one coming a mile off. Back in '53 its future Cold War setting probably provided food for thought, less so in the present.
76.
by Alastair Fraser (no photo) Finish Date: 8 August 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: A-
Review: If you decide you want an in-depth look at the making of the 1916 blockbuster Battle of the Somme , this is the book for you. The illustrations tell their own story: the exhausted eyes of the wounded or the alternation of relief and shell-shock on the faces of Bavarian prisoners. A crouched corpse, the left had darkened with pooled blood, carries a pathos that even Michelangelo's Pieta cannot match.
Time has not softened the impact upon the public. One widow [mis]identified her husband on-screen in October, a month after she'd received the KIA notice. One great-granddaughter almost saw her father or brother on-screen in 2011, who had inherited the mannerisms and smile of an ancestor that was to be dead within the hour.
77.
by
Robert KershawFinish Date: 9 August 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: A
Review: Move over, Martin Middlebrook! Kershaw brings us as close to the horror of the first day on the Somme as a historian can. With a cast of dozens, we now find ourselves in the German dugouts as they are subjected to the nerve-grating terror of the Somme's week-long opening bombardment. The French, unfortunately, remain out of sight on their riverbanks.
There is little room for Rawlingson and Haig in their HQ, where the ubiquitous breakdown in communications disclosed only slowly the degree of failure on the "worst day in the history of the British Army". The tactical significance of the Somme, where a breakthrough with limited means gave way to a war of attrition based upon firepower rather than manpower, was lost to the communities from whence the men on the ground came. They were now inundated with "fallen on the field of honour" telegrams by the street. This book belongs to those twenty thousand.
78.
by
Guido KnoppFinish Date: 29 August 2017
Genre: German history / WWII
Rating: B-
Review: It's a good book for the novice; the seasoned reader can still enjoy the sidebar testimonies, collected from the memories of the vanished middle-aged generation of WWII.
From their humble origins as Hitler's bodyguard, each chapter seems them grow into a 'racial brotherhood' under Himmler, the scourge of Czechoslavakia under Heydrich, the perpetrators of the Holocaust and finally the ferocious foe of the Western invasion force, from Normandy to the Bulge.
There is a small amount of soul-searching. Knopp likes to stress blind obedience as a core value. It does not sit quite well with the definition one survivor gave: "they were...like predators. Elegant, polite. Beethoven & Wagner could move them to tears. But underneath, they were always ready to kill.".
79.
by Robert Forczyk(no photo)Finish Date: 31 August 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: A-
Review: It squarely lives up to its blurp: "While most histories of the siege of Leningrad focus on the plight of the starving civil population, this refreshing title instead examines the strength of the garrison's defenses -"
Just so. The only light in which the civilian starvation is shown, is its detrimental effect upon manpower in terms of labourers and urban militia. Most of the book is spent on the barricades with the garrison and on the other side of the ring, with the relief armies' unfaltering efforts to create a corridor into the city.
SEPTEMBER80.
by Slava Katamidze(no photo)Finish date: 7 September 2017
Genre: Soviet history
Rating: B-
Review:Tales from the cloack-and-dagger universe are never crystal, so this history still contains many lacunes & assumptions. It makes for a slightly confusing read, albeit beautifully illustrated.
How many novelties do I take away from this ? Perhaps that more Red Army officers were reinstated after the Great Terror than commonly assumed. The role of double agents in the confusion that plagued Stavka about the exact invasion date, as well as the number of German divisions involved and their roads of advance.
The fact that the NKVD deployed entire divisions' worth of troops. In such numbers, their task encompassed a lot more than just forming 'blocking detachments' who post machine-guns at the backs of their own Ivans. They took part in combat and suffered heavy casualties.
The scale of the secret service's guidance of partisan activity behind German lines is staggering: Katamidze claims a number of 700.000 agents of whom many were trained in a manner reminiscent of the SOE and the commandos.
The meat on the post-war period lies with the development of the Soviet nuclear program, which owes to many more individuals than just the Cambridge Five and Klays Fuchs.
What do I refuse to hear ? I'm loathe to accept a good word on Beria. Finally, the bibliography is very meager, at least in this edition. Where are the dozens of pages filled with archive references in inpronouncable Latinized Russian ?
Nice to hear that more of the Red Army were re-instated.
81.
by
Ian V. HoggFinish Date: 8 SEptember 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: B+
Review: To be read again and again and again. There is so much technical discussion in here that a first read will be like a swallow in the clouds; afterwards, one can dive in like a hawk to pick up mind-boggling detail such as the various pivot designs for 1870's coastal guns.
As the late Ian V. Hogg himself acknowledges, brevity necessitates that this is only A History of Artillery, but Goodreads' search results don't show much younger competition. Naturally, its virtue lies partly in the artwork by legendary John Batchelor, whose team efforts with Hogg are always a must-read on any subject military.
Hogg knows exactly what to select for each period. The medieval origins of artillery focuses on re-evaluating the role of "Doctor Mirabilis" Roger Bacon and the myriad of erroneous 'earliest reference' contenders.
The early modern period would see little improvement in this field. Instead, artillery reached mobile maturity both within the increasingly scientific realm of fortification and siege warfare and Napoleon's grandes batteries .
The text gains momentum with the patent fever of the mid-19th century. New and improved combustibles make their appearance, allowing guns to grow in size and range until, at the eve of the Great War, indirect fire is a thing.
This is also where some background in physics and metallurgy becomes a plus... and I have none! the complex chemistry of 1890's grenades or the fabrication of retractable domes are beyond me.
Be that as it may, the momentum leads to the bread and butter of the book : WWI and WWII. The 19th-century transition from the Napoleonic howitzer to the Big Bertha is barely coupled to the numerous conflicts of the 1800's, except for the German Wars of Unification, which awoke the European Powers great and small to the rapidly changing face of the God of War. The wars themselves are dealt with in a slightly swaggering manner, as the combatants copy each other or at least try to catch up by more original means. The illustrations do not readily accompany the text, but the sum of their captions is a wide enough selection of (mostly) Anglo-French vs. German gun designs, some iconic, some curiosities that never made it onto the field.
82.
by
Stephen KingFinish Date: 21 September 2017
Genre: Horror
Rating: B
Review: The Langoliers tear through this story of gradual bewilderment so swiftly that you barely have time to ask yourself the million dollar question: how does Stephen King do it ? Even in short story format, he can stretch a one-trick pony. On-screen would take up two seconds to reveal itself to the audience; how can he kill so much time with dialogue and mood-building so as to keep us flipping the pages ? Unlike a slasher movie, Stephen King only needs one kill. We only need one read. It's the inherent weakness of the formula: you cannot go back to the big surprise.
I suppose that's why he writes so many. Even when I try, part way through I always remember and it spoils the fun. Only The Stand have I ever re-read. I think I will be able to re-read 11-22-63 also because he captured the time so well. Still, Stephen King gives a great ride for the money.
and
by
Stephen King
82.
by Roger Chickering (no photo)Finish Date: 21 September 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: A-
Review: While it cannot disguise its nature as a graduate textbook, this concise yet comprehensive look at the German experience of WWI is surprisingly engaging. It's like a Hohenzollern-cetric little brother to Ring of Steel with more socio-economics thrown in to balance the Western Front with the Home Front.
by Alexander Watson(no photo)
83.
by Edward M. Coffman(no photo)Finish Date: 21 september 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: B+
Review: The best recognition of your status as a classic is to be reissued for the next generation. Still, Coffman's greatest asset, a living segment of the Doughboys, feels underused, with only 50 interviewees listed in the bibliographical essay. It takes the joy out of what is otherwise indeed a great primer on the AEF.
He's off on a slow start which contrasts with the feverish pace of the U.S. military's expansion but gives a sense of the magnitude of the task at hand. The impression you're most likely to take away from the first half ? Just when the U.S.A. had its affairs in order - especially in terms of transatlantic transport - the war was over.
Once we march to the sound of the guns, we march gaily. The mud-choaked atmosphere of the impenetrable Argonne Forest is rendered palable through the veteran's own words, at last.
What stands out is a good eye for strategic ground : offensives dominated by American formations often targetted long-neglected cornerstones of the German lines in Eastern France...yet we learn almost nothing about which lessons the selective draftees from all states absorbed or discarded from their (tiresome) allies.
The plight of the Negro troops (50.000 out of 200.000 , the rest being labourers) gets the attention it deserves in a work written at the height of the Civil Rights movement, in what through American eyes must be a distinctively 'liberal fashion'. Suffice it to say they fought as well as whites - the nickname Harlem Hellfighters doesn't appear out of thin air - but remained trapped in the institutionalized racism of the day.
P.S. "spot the WWII commander" is a fun game when reading about the American intervention in the Great War.
84.
by Brian Davis (no photo)Finish Date: 22 September 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: B
Review: All the flag minutia you can handle, down to the nails on the pole & the techniques behind every silk thread. Wonderfully illustrated in colour... and bitterly ironic in its inclusion of ever-curtailing Flag Regulations.
The outbreak of war largely put a stop to the creation of new flags, save for the foreign volunteer units of the Waffen-SS. In 1944, it also banished regimental colours to museums in inner Germany, save from the disgraceful capture by the enemy who closed in on both sides, with the generic Kriegsflagge suddenly omnipresent as a sign of Hitler's distrust of his own regulars after the July Plot. Finally, a lot of festive usage of silk banners was postponed until the final victory that never came.
Gorgeously martial by design, employing centuries-old German symbolism and ultimately a short-lived novelty that tried artificially to redirect the course of history, these flags embody the hubris of Nazi Germany.
85.
by
Christy BrownFinish Date: 25 September 2017
Genre: autiobiography
Rating: B-
Review: the next time you complain because you got no shoes
take a look at the man on the next stool
the man has got no feet, no toes to play the blues
Dale Watson's cautionary song would've made a decent epitaph for Brown, whose autobiography chronicles his struggle to compensate for the one thing he lacked: a body that obeyed him. Luckily, he had the three most important things in the world: a good brain, an iron spirit and a loving mother.
The only problem with a mid-life autobiography is the lack of artistic output; we see him master the brush but save Dickens, not his literary influences. His time at the hospital offers a tantalizing glimpse at the mid-century state orthopedics, all tough the basics remain unchanged: operate where you can & train your limbs to stimulate the neurotransmission to the max.
86.
by
Robert LymanFinish Date: 27 September 2017
Rating: B+
Review: No frills, you say? While Robert Lyman confirms to Osprey's workhorse standards, you cannot deny the sympathy he brings to the subject and the RAF Habbaniya Association, who keeps alive the memory of the now derelict airfield that once bested the Luftwaffe's Irak detachment and chased off on overwhelming Iraqi force with a mere 39 pilots and Lewis guns in blockhouses.
"Bluff" is the operative word of the entire campaign to preserve Britain's only source of oil, the true blood of modern war - aside from the scant U.S. imports that reached through the Wolfpacks. A poor man's Blitzkrieg to frighten off a pro-German usurper, It was a campaign in the best tradition of the British Army: come as you are, make do with what you got. May 1941 saw the Empire fighting in Egypt, Greece and braced for an invasion. India was the only command that had anything to spare.
Notice the steadiness of loyal Iraqi levies and the virtual absence of the Germans. A humorous endnote; the armistice obliged the British to return any confiscated heavy weapons... which made up a good part of Habforce's firepower. Some veterans did a hasty disobedient paint job and took their machine-guns with them to face the Afrika Corps.
October 87.
/
by
David StarkeyFinish Date: 8 October 2017
Genre: biography
Rating: B
Review: Youth ends where marriage and fatherhood begin. Starkey's definition is sensible enough and all though he may make a psychological assumption too many where the source material gets sketchy, his easy-going narrative style befits the theatrical nature of Tudor kingship.
We see Henry growing up in a female household, separated from his older brother, the carefully groomed Crown Prince, but not lacking neither attention or a rounded upbringing. Indeed, the overall impression is the status of Second Son as a luxury; all the perks, none of the obligations. Between an old-fashioned flowery Latin teacher and the starker humanist of Erasmus (via Thomas Moore), Henry knew his classics. Tall and naturally heavy-set like a wrestler, Philip of France nurtured his love of jousting, all tough for the safety of the dynasty, he was mostly confined to staking rings with precision rather than duelling with sword and lance.
It's a very optimistic biography which, whether you like it or not, contains almost no hints at the goudy tyrant of later years. Starkey remains wedded to his verdict in the introduction to "Six Wives" : Henry expected his marriages to make him happy, in a very 20th century fashion. The only veiled allusion is the contrast between him and his father. The former was a money-saver who never forgot that he won his throne by force. The latter was a big spender who aspired to greatness by the standard of late medieval kingship.
by
David Starkey
88.
by
Julian RathboneFinish Date: 13 October 2017
Genre: Satire
Rating: B-
Review: Our very English agent and unreliable narrator is much more agreeable than Oskar Matzerath. Whether he plants the notion of the Origin of Species in Darwin's head or suffering the misadventures of John C. Frémont on his way to the Pacific, his dungeon reminiscences ably fill in the blanks of history. If you don't believe him, go along for the ride with Albion's answer to Baron Von Münchausen. You will make numerous stops, looking back slightly confused: how did we end up from there to here ?
89.
by
Walter LordFinish Date: 14 October 2017
Genre; military history
Rating: A
Review: what makes a classic a classic when we deal with non-fiction? Is it merely the balance of judgement? The fact that this is one Dunkirk book that's all about Dunkirk and its perimeter, without wasting a third of its running time on The retreat from Mons II: France gives up ? Or because it proves that in spite of revisionist acts such as Dunkirk, the Patriotic Myth there really was such a thing as the "Dunkirk Spirit" in the air, felt by all and demonstrated towards the weary soldiers being dispersed by train and showered with congratulations by civilians? Lord does not shy away from the human array of reactions to the crisis: ranging from propaganda-framed sangfroid among the men left behind to plain self-preserving cowardice among the crews of the "small ships".
*
by Nicholas Harman(no photo)
90.
by
Martin PeglerFinish Date: 14 October 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: B+
Review: you don't expect a booklet about an MG to be sexy, but damn if Pegler doesn't come close. Nobody does it better because he knows the weapon intimately, having fired thousands of rounds from several models - he can convey the sound, the smell, the feel, the powerful sensation. The close-up illustrations to his erudite storytelling, together with their captions, are superb.
The obligatory origins of the machine-gun start with the bigoted inventor whose desire to shred Turkish infidels with square bullets was squared by the technical limitations of the 1600s. These lead us smoothly past the Gatling to the trial-and-error by H. Maxim. These familiar stories are told with an eye for technical detail that will appeal to both engineers and mechanical ignorami such as yours truly.
The meat of its operational history, once the Boers had taught the Tommies the importance of concealment from both ends of the barrel, lies naturally in the trenches of the Western Front, where under a different name it was laborously carried forward on its heavy sled to face Kitchener's armies.
A false note in the symphony sounds a year later, when the stuttering from inside concrete pillboxes is likely to be answered by the portable firepower of the Lewis gun, more suited to mobile warfare in its renaissance. This explains why WWII is rather glossed over; the "Old Hand" remained in static service, or vehicle-mounted, but did not learn any new tricks.
Vickers well deserves to have his name joined to Maxim's; the industrial capital and production capacity of his steelworks were the key to the meteoric rise of this iconic weapon. His firm's output also ensured the enduring presence of large numbers of Maxims in a world crisscrossed with decolonisation conflicts and cold wars by proxy.
91.
by John Christopher(no photo)Finish Date: 29 October 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: B=
The worst tank to win a war? Christopher ultimately seems to agree with the classic verdict on the M4, since he attributes its victory over the increasingly sophisticated German tanks to the 10:1 quantitative superiority, all though he seeks to redeem its reputation as an ignite-prone death trap not to the fuel tank or the armour, but to the widespread crew's practice of stowing the turret to the max with ammo. Whether a hull in one piece or welded from steel plate was the better choice is best left with the crew, too.
Its strength lies first and foremost in the lavish illustrations, based upon U.S. Collections, the Bovington Tank Museum and other prominent but less familiar armour museums worldwide. While it does not have the cut-aways of Zaloga's study of the Sherman for Osprey's Vanguard series , the real-life close ups make up for this. To a greater extent than Osprey, this booklet also looks at the many variants of the 'default' Sherman. Not just Hobart's Funnies, but also post-war modifications. It's all poured into a neat table that helps to make sense of the divergent U.S. and British denominations (it was them that came up with the official nickname "Sherman").
92.
&
by Jonathan Sutherland(no photo)Finish Date: 30 oktober 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: B+
Review: All roads lead to Rome, but which to take ? Contemporary photographs & fanciful colour prints, as Robin Smith does ? Modern art work, the Osprey way of Ron Field? Or caption highly detailed photos of hardcore re-enactors?
Sutherland proves that in uniformology, as opposed to politics, a Third Way exist. While not as comprehensive as the sterile drawings of Histoire & Collections' twin publication on ACW uniforms, the detail of the selected uniforms on the field does much to illustrate the divergent diversity of real life vs. the uniformity of Army Regulations. They remind us that the people in the old photos were once living humans, who wore a non-regulation cotton shirt because the sun baked them in their wool coats, slung a weapon differently to ease the weight on a sore shoulder, and turned old socks into puttees to protect their shoes from mud during a hard day's march.
Twin read with Confederate Troops of the American Civil War, which has the added insight into the Lost Cause going for it. In terms of industry, the South was hopelessly outclassed and it showed in the lack of uniforms from the start - while North Carolina kept 50.000 in stock unused, enough to re-tailor Lee's entire army.
93.
+
+
by Philip R.N. Katcher(no photo)Finish Date: 31 October 2017
Genre: vexillology
Rating: C-
Review: Philip Katcher can do little wrong on the subject of the ACW, but Osprey lets him down on these. Ideally, every banner under discussion would receive a colour plate rather than a murky B&W photograph. Also, too much text is recycled verbatim from original regulations, thus avaliable online.
As per usual, that stubborn Southern stateness is the spice of study. The different designs of the Battle Flag occupy centre stage, complete with a reproduction of a 1880's colour booklet. While the Union volume out of three tries to make the reader feel the emotional significance of a regimental banner, the South acted on it with more bravado on the field. The state & volunteer unit flags are the most endearing of the Flag trilogy; most reminiscent of the colourful flag montage in Gods and Generals' opening montage.
NOVEMBER94.
by
Edgar Allan PoeFinish Date: 1 September 2017
Genre: horror
Rating: A
Review: this is as much as I can trim it down after leaving out illustrations and citations , really !
This is really a story that needs to be read in your teens and again when you're older and hopefully, wiser. Because underneath the gratification of vengeance, there stands a wood into which Montrésor does not which to lead us. He might find himself lost in the mists of his imagination.
On the surface, it is easy to identify with our protagonist as he has suffered a thousand slights. We all know at least one Fortunato, especially in high school. On second thought, If an insult to the family name was the straw that broke the camel's back, then why not simply resort to the gentleman's tradition of cold steel?
What is the nature of the thousand precedents that warrant this instance? We shall learn nothing of this from our narrator, unless he betrays himself to both the audience and the fool. He does, twice.
Does Montrésor find his vineyard expertise outmatched, has it driven him to financial ruin? Has his standing in the community suffered accordingly? His lineage stretches back centuries, but what about the pedigree of Fortunato? Do we witness the proverbial clash between the old nobility and the nouveau riche?
The part of Fortunato in the situation is particularly foggy; the opening statement hints at a gradual deterioration of their acquaintance. Yet even in sobriety he remains oblivious to a fault. It is also impossible to determine whether Montrésor misreads him. I am disinclined to think that a singular incident pushed him over the edge. Whatever the origins of his silent wrath, Montrésor is a man consumed. His thirst for revenge seems to stem as much from his character as from any wrongdoing by Fortunato’s hand.
Fortunato certainly shows himself to be a persistent personality, to the point of stubbornness when reinforced by wine. He deflects repeated perverse offers to turn back from the damp atmosphere of the vaults. Right before the trap springs, he betrays a certain callousness which is the only hint that Montrésor may be not wholly unjustified in his set-up.
Is this casual dismissal how he treats people to their face? Or is it merely the outspokenness of youth? Because the final, contect reflection by Montrésor on the fate of his friend...proves this was a young man’s game played out as the Bastille was stormed, when this cape called a roquelaire was fashionable.
95.
by Mark Lardas(no photo)Finish Date; 6 November 2017
Genre: military history
Rating: B
Review: Chattanooga feels like Shiloh's younger cousin: another confused battle in the woods of the West, precisely the kind of incohesive slaughter as which the contemporary Von Moltke the Elder was wont to dismiss the entire war. With Lee turned back at Gettysburg & the Mississippi breached at Vicksburg, Tennessee stood behind door number three as the last hope to reverse Northern fortunes bloodily enough to enforce European intervention and/or a negociated peace that would de facto see an independent Confederate States of America with slavery intact. Chattanooga is chronologically situated in the beginning of the namesake campaign, so Missionary Ridge & Wauhatchie get very short shrift.
Lardas, whose ancestor apparently was on the field, does what he can to create clarity out of chaos. The "Battlefield Today" section and the bulky blue-vs-red 3-D Maps are a great help. Where he cannot, at least we feel the confusion of Bragg's isolated HQ as his Western brigades dispersed into regiments that enfiladed or as his transplanted veterans from the Eastern theatre were shredded at at angle behind their improvised breastworks in turn
96.
by Charles Messenger(no photo)Finish Date: 9 November 2017
Genre: military history
Rating : A-
Review: The story of Blitzkrieg that most books about Blitzkrieg don't tell. They are too eager to get to the armoured jousting at Kursk and the Tiger scare amidst the hedges of France. Charles Messenger, regular officer in the Royal Tank Regiment, by contrast devotes half his pages to the question: how exactly did we get from the blundering beasts of Cambrai to the galloping giants of Normandy?
His survey of the development of the land ironclad both in theory and hardware during the 1920's and 1930's concentrates upon the main antagonists of the next war: Great Britain, the United States, Germany, the Soviet Union and France. Poland, Italy and Japan get on average a sentence each per chapter, but disappear completely during the events of 1939-1944.
A certain amount of traditional anglocentric Fuller vs. Liddell Hart dispute is to be expected, but it serves different purposes. Foremost the dual end of Blitzkrieg: a double envelopment of the antagonist army towards a Cannae-style annihilation, or more indirectly, a breakthrough to disrupt his command and communications infrastructure? Triandafillov's "Deep Operations" tried to combine both in a carefully staged process. Secondly, the connection with combined arms warfare. The Italian Douet, whose theories are popularly capsuled as "the bomber always gets through!", joins the fray here. Was the airforce to pursue an independent strategy, focusing on destroying the enemy armaments industry? Should it rather work in tandem with the tanks? What role does a fighter plane in either scenario? To what extent should the accompanying mass infantry be motorized to keep up with what would certainly be an elite tank force?
Thirdly and most importantly, you learn to sympathize more with the interwar "Donkeys" which restricted the tank to an infantry support role. Nobody was certain enough (with the exception of the overzealous Fuller, whose influence waned proportionally as the 30's progressed) what form tank and airplane would take to convince others. Strategic bombing was in its infancy in 1918 and 'straffing' ranked low on the fighter pilot's priorities list, devoted as they were to overall air superiority for artillery spotting.
The slow technological development of the tank itself reinforced inherent caution. Unlike lorries for mobile infantry, this expensive behemoth had no civilian applications, so by itself held no promise for the next army contract. It remained for a long time a most cumbersome all-terrain vehicle, incapable of matching the speed of horse cavalry off the road. Combined arms including the hoof was less old-fashioned than it seems to us, all the more so since light anti-tank guns and heavy MG's gave the mounted troops a rejuvenation not seen since carbines joined the blank weapons. The Polish squadrons would demonstrate as much against German armoured cars.
"Tankettes", open two-man tracked vehicles armed with MG's, were a swifter answer but hopelessly inadequate by the time hostilities broke out.
Messenger's generic battle narrative is not without merit - especially for sideshows such as the Winter War or the Balkans - but he stays on the subject most of the time. Poland taught the Germans the need for mobile repair shops; the toll of the Polish terrain on their park was so great that incorporated Czech tanks were not a luxury. The attack on the Low Countries and France saw airborne operations added to the exemplary tactical teamwork of Panzer Division and Luftwaffe, while the British had barely any armoured formations to take the field with and the French kept theirs too far in reserve - alltough De Gaulle showed what a Char B could do if it's crew stood its ground. You would expect Messenger to use 'bad tank country' as the main reason why Dunkirk became possible, but he prefers still to blame Goerings pride, which only served to disprove Douet.
Bombers could not defeat an army by themselves and the Luftwaffe had never bothered to implement a strategic construction program, which wasn't a problem until the Russian industry began to spew T-34's faster than the German pincers could destroy them. Overextension is pretty much The Word on the planes of the western Soviet Union, with never enough planes and tanks to go around to execute Hitler's constantly shifting attack plans. The wooded, marshy terrain of the Baltics and the mountainous outskirts of the Caucasus left the work to the bulk of the Wehrmacht - foot infantry and horse-drawn transport. The Soviet High Command eventually learned (anew) from the Patriotic War of 1812 to trade space for time rather than to stand and fight to the last. This overextended not only the supply lines, with the fuel and spare parts for Germany's threedimensional mailed fist, but also the feasible amount of frontage the infantry could cover, even within a system of strongpoints combined with mobile patrols. Once Stalingrad deprived the manpower pool of 300.000 men in urban warfare where tanks and mobility counted for nothing, the initiative was lost forever. Kursk was a pre-emptive strike to weaken the inevitable Soviet attack on the thin Feltgrau line, but their opponents could afford to slug like a boxer, again and again and again. Maybe this simplifies the evolution of Soviet operational art, but they knew their strengths in numbers suited total war, both in men as in metal.
The Anglo-American side of the story is characterized by a just approach. The "open warfare" the AEF brought to Europe a generation earlier supported by both a tactical airforce which took brute force to the max with carpet bombing as a strategic airforce which took the fight to the hinterland. Unfortunately the bocage landscape, the ruins of Caen and the supply bottleneck kept the roaming tracks on a leash. Messenger, interestingly, credits Hitler's Fortress order towards Cherbourg etc. for aggravating the shortage of fuel that plagued Third Army - which performed some of the most impressive feats of long range armoured advance feeding off other' armies allotments and captured stocks.
The Ardennes pass by as fleetingly as the confusion caused by operation Wacht am Rhein: besides a shortage of fuel and reserves, the SS simply were short on surprise as well. The book ends with a chapter on Israeli use of tanks in 1948 - an interesting freebie, which, in the days of 1976, would've been as relevant to the Six Day's and Yom Kippur wars as an epilogue on Desert Storm to the current war(s ) in the Middle East.
The History Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Het einde van de Rode mens: Leven op de puinhopen van de Sovjet-Unie (other topics)Vimy: The Battle and the Legend (other topics)
The Cambrai Campaign 1917 (other topics)
Het Ardennenoffensief. Het heroïsche verhaal van het meest onderscheiden peloton in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (other topics)
The Battle of the Bulge: Hitler's Final Gamble (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Svetlana Alexievich (other topics)Tim Cook (other topics)
Andrew Rawson (other topics)
Alex Kershaw (other topics)
Patrick Delaforce (other topics)
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From me also. I'm in awe of you voracious readers.