What Are You Currently Reading? 2010

[Tukhachevskii]

A long time since I read on this subject, IIRC Professor Geoffrey Parker wrote about this (I have an emailed a friend more familiar with this subject) and there was a series of books on European warfare, edited by Prof. Geoffrey Best IIRC. Fuchs might know more as his grasp of history is wider than mine and of course the wars centred in what was to become Germany.

Added after reply email:

Geoffrey Parker has written some very readable and yet scholarly books on 16th and 17th century European History which are in print - or at least widely available.

Geoffrey Elton (better know as GR Elton)'s 'Reformation Europe' in the Fontana paperback series of the 1960s/70s is still the best and clearest intro for the non-specialist.
That book takes you roughly just past the 1555 Augsburg treaty.

JH Elliot's 'Europe Divided' is the very clear, well-organised sequel to Elton in the same Fontana series; he's also a lively but reliable author best known for 'Imperial Spain'.
Europe Divided takes you to 1598, death of King Philip II of Spain.

The following volume in the Fontana series - I forget the title ('Europe in Crisis' ?) - is by Parker and takes you up to the Westphalia treaties of 1648. My special subject at college was the Revolt of the Netherlands, 1568 - 1648, about which he has written a lot e.g. 'The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road' (1970s).

.

Parker is required reading especially after he extended/developed the concept of a military revolution first touted by Michael Roberts in the 50s. I would also recommend anything written by Jeremy Black esp.; Rethinking Military History, Warfare in the Eighteenth Century, Europe and the World 1650-1830, and A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society 1550-1800 among others.

As for (G) Elton I have never much liked the "Whig historian" which see Herbert Butterfield and The Whig Interpretation of History

[Tukhachevskii]

Recently read...


David Bellavia (with John Bruning), House to House: An Epic of Urabn Warfare

Mark N. Woodruff, Unheralded Victory: Who won the Vietnam War?

&

Robin Moore, Task Force Dagger: The Hunt for Bin Laden

[Wargames Mark]

Eastern Approaches, by Fitzroy MacLean

Complexity: A Guided Tour, by Melanie Mitchell

[davidbfpo]

Wargames Mark,

Eastern Approaches, by Fitzroy MacLean

Excellent book, the authors tour descriptions through Stalinist USSR are really amazing and the chapter on the conflicts in Yugoslavia i.e. Bosnia is an excellent primer on why the communities fought.

[Spud]

Did a couple over leave (in between struggling through some old Wilber Smith's ... that guy could do with a good editor):

Finally finished The Men Who Persevered (Australian Army Training Team in Vietnam) by Bruce Davies and Gary McKay and The Tiger Man of Vietnam by Frank Walker. Preferred Barry Pettersen's telling of his own story in Tiger Men than the effort by Walker.

Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton ... good read about the events surrounding the capture of John Walker Lindh in Afghanistan.

Just getting started on Orson Scott Card's Empire ... it was the inspiration for a great XBox Live Arcade game Shadow Complex last year and after finishing off COD Modern Warfare 2 last night there's also a little bit in that. Gotta love a good military conspiracy.

[Spud]

Recently read...


Robin Moore, Task Force Dagger: The Hunt for Bin Laden

Burn it ... Burn it with fire

[Tukhachevskii]

Burn it ... Burn it with fire

I, too, have come to the same conclusion. There was much in it that was factual nonsense whilst the rest of it appeaered to be pure fantasy. Don't get me wrong, much of it does reek of virsimilitude but of a strained variety. Still, it was interesting nonetheless.

Just finished reading Sniper One, by Sgt Dan Mills. Scorching stuff!!

[reed11b]

Blink by Malcom Gladwell
Not a COIN book per se, but extremely relevant to much of what we discuss here and I recommend the book highly.
Reed

[Bob's World]

FM 31-23 Stability Operations - U.S. Army Doctrine. December 1967

CSM Tommy Smith handed me a copy as I was heading out the door for Afghanistan, and just got around to cracking it open today. An excellent manual all about dealing with insurgency. Term not found in the glossary? "Counterinsurgency."

Thanks Sergeant Major, I approve and share your endorsement of this "lost" bit of doctrine.

[Jedburgh]

FM 31-23 Stability Operations - U.S. Army Doctrine. December 1967

CSM Tommy Smith handed me a copy as I was heading out the door for Afghanistan, and just got around to cracking it open today. An excellent manual all about dealing with insurgency. Term not found in the glossary? "Counterinsurgency."

Thanks Sergeant Major, I approve and share your endorsement of this "lost" bit of doctrine.

FYI - there's a thread on the board from '07 that is mostly links to digital copies of vintage COIN and stability doctrine