Your Favourite Military Book (Thread)
 

Add a short note why

Mine is

Shockwave
The countdown to
Hiroshima
by
Stephen Walker

This book is incredible and tells the whole story around the bomb testing and development up to the drop....

read it a few times and each time i read it i learn something else

special note to another book:

The Forgotton Soldier
by
Guy Sajer
This is another incredible book about a 17 yr old german soldier fighting on the eastern front, some of the scenes described are hard to digest....if you look this book up some dispute how authentic it is, but its an amazing read

Das Boot, Lothar gunther Buchheim.

The writer himself made three patrols with a German sub in WW2, and the events thereof are moulded into one long story, with fictional characters based on the actual
U-boat crew. It's the best anti war book I've read so far.

The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam by Martin Windrow. Published in 2004 the author had access to the most recently declassified French govt documents related to their involvement in Vietnam.

Initially looks at politics of pre WWII Vietnam. An incredibly interesting book. Well written and readable.

Parachute Infantry by David Kenyon Webster. Its the memoirs of an Easy Co. paratrooper. Its a very well written book about an average soldier in the 101st Airborn in WWII

This book came out when I was in the Army, right after Vietnam. It is excellent.
http://www.amazon.com/Dispatches-Mic.../dp/0679735259

There are a lot of good ones, but I think my favorite is "Ghost Soldiers". It's the account of one of the first US Army Ranger missions, to rescue prisoners in a Japanese POW camp near the end of WWII. Tells the whole story of planning the mission, negotiating permission to carry it out, then actually doing it. Really gripping. Also pulls no punches detailing the horriffic conditions in the camp.

Hard to pick just one, but Robert Massie's Castlesof Steel about the naval war in WWI is brilliantly written. Just the right amount of great original writing and historical qoutes.

For a runner up, I would pick Bruce Catton's A Stillness at Appomattox, the third of Catton's 1950s era trilogy on the Civil War. I cannot understand why it is so hard to find Catton's books...with all due respect to the more easy to find Civil War books by Shelby Foote and James McPherson, Catton's books are a far more interesting and entertaining read in my opinon.

By the way all the books above are non-fiction. Well-written non fiction to me is so far superior to war fiction, because the stuff actually happened.

Most of the modern non-fiction are ghost written rubbish, but a modern fiction book that is very well written is Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes about the Vietnam War. Its a really good story written by someone who was there.

The only one I've read was The Bluejackets Manual.

Yep. And, if you've watched HBO's Band of Brothers, you will recognize the Webster material that was included.

We Were Soldiers Once and Young by J. Galloway and Lt Gen. H Moore 


It Doesn't take a Hero by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf

SOG by John L Plaster...Hands down the most intriguing Vietnam book I have read. It's about the MACVSOG teams that did cross border operations into Laos and Cambodia.

Marine Sniper...About Carlos Hathcock.

The Second World War by Winston S. Churchill.

Blinds Man Bluff
Halsey's Typhoon

I love reading anything to do with the Navy especially submarines.

The book I wish I could read is the original version of "War as I knew it" by GS Patton. I read the sanitized version instead.

I have read a number of other military/history books that I have enjoyed.

Take care,

edg

Art of War

Breakout by Martin Russ

Really an excellent book on the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. Also, there is a documentary available on Netflix called Chosin which makes an excellent companion to the book... the documentary is stunning and left me speechless. Best documentary I've seen besides Standing in the Shadows of Motown.

The Black Devils was a great book if your into WWII history. The 1st Special Service Group did some amazing things in Italy and the story of inception is pretty amazing.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence. One of the first to more or less codify guerilla warfare. At one point had about 30 books on TE, before I gave away most of them prior to a move. Now wish I hadn't, but at least Pillars is now on my Kindle...

Years ago I read Hitler's Navy and enjoyed it. I had no idea their armed forces had so much trouble working together.