What Are You Currently Reading? 2013

[Old Eagle]

Using Gray as a text next term.

[davidbfpo]

When Sir Michael Howard, the pre-eminent British military historian (who is still attending conferences in London) writes a book review I notice; ah, yes I've not read the book he reviews!

Some four decades ago, the TLS sent me a book to review by a young lecturer at Sandhurst entitled The Face of Battle. It impressed me so much that I described it as “one of the best half-dozen books on warfare to have appeared since the Second World War”. I wondered at the time if I had made a total fool of myself, but I need not have worried. The author, the late Sir John Keegan, proved to be one of the greatest military historians of his generation. It would be rash to put my money on such a dark horse again, but I shall. Emile Simpson’s War From the Ground Up is a work of such importance that it should be compulsory reading at every level in the military; from the most recently enlisted cadet to the Chief of the Defence Staff and, even more important, the members of the National Security Council who guide him.

He ends with:

It is impossible to summarize Emile Simpson’s ideas without distorting them. ...... In short (and here I shall really go overboard) War From the Ground Up deserves to be seen as a coda to Clausewitz’s On War. But it has the advantage of being considerably shorter.

The book is 'War From The Ground Up: Twenty-first-century combat as politics' by Emile Simpson. 285pp. Publishers: Hurst. £25. 978 1 84904 255 0 and in the USA by Columbia University Press. $32.50. 978 0 231 70406 9.

Link to fuller review:http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1239841.ece

Two reviews on Amazon UK:http://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Ground-U...at+as+politics and no reviews on Amazon USA:http://www.amazon.com/War-Ground-Up-...=emile+simpson