What are you currently reading ?

[kipt]

finished an interesting book "Seize The Fire: Heroism, Duty, And The Battle Of Trafalgar" by Adam Nicolson.  It can best be described as a psychoanalysis discussion of Nelson, the British officers mindset and "cultural differences" from the French and Spanish.

Once it gets to the battle there are good descriptions of the carnage and destruction in those ships that were engaged.  Overall, it is engaging with a psychology bent.

[kipt]

Finished "Decisions At The Wilderness And Spotsylvania Court House: The Eighteen Critical Decisions That Defined the Battles" by Dave Townsend and maps by Tim Kissel.

The meat of the book is a discussion of the author's take on 18 decisions he says are critical.  These are developed by discussing the situation, listing options the commander(s) could take (with 2 to 3 options), the decision made and then the Results/Impact.  This method gives a good review of what happened.

Appendix I is a battlefield guide to each of the decisions (so very repetitive narration) with driving directions around the battlefields and maps of the stops.  The maps however do not show troop placements so in my mind are of limited value.  The US Army War College guides are much better in this respect.  There are also photographs illustrating the areas fought over.

Appendices II and II are the OB's of the Union and Confederate armies, listing commanders and units (but no strengths).

[Steve J]

Brothers in Arms by James Holland. Focusing on the Sherwood Rangers, it covers similar ground I've read in plenty of other books, but has lots of interesting snippets that I haven't come across before. As with all his books, very readable and the pages flip by, which can't be said of other books on the NWE campaign. Highly recommended.

[kipt]

Finished volume 7 "Aleutians, Gilberts and Marshalls: June 1942-April 1944" of Samuel Eliot Morison's history of the US Navy.

Recommended if you are interested in WWII naval of the US navy.

[kipt]

Finished volume 7, the "Aleutians, Gilberts and Marshalls: June 1942 - April 1944" of Samuel Eliot Morison's history of the US Navy on WWII.  Recommended if you are interested in the US Navy.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Finished 'War Bodies' by Neal Asher
Brilliant hard sci-fi

[petedavies]

The (US) "Field Artillery Journal", August 1946. A few pdfs appeared in a Google search for something else.

Interesting to get a flavour of the end/immediate aftermath of WWII.

One article was a surprise to me - describing the use of radar for ground surveillance & artillery targeting in NW Europe theatre from late 1944(!) directing fire against vehicle concentrations and road movements (including a single, very unlucky horse-drawn cart) and even a guided interception of an enemy foot patrol at night. The radar also picked up the shell bursts for correction (range accurate to 10 yards).

Fancy stuff for 1940's technology...

Cheers,
Pete

[toxicpixie]

That's a good read, cheers!

[kipt]

Sorry about the double entry above.  Didn't think the first one took.

Finished "Guide To The Battle Of Shiloh" edited by Jay Luuvas, Stephen Bowman and Leonard Fullenkamp, and part of the U.S. Army War College Guides To Civil War Battles.

Unlike the previous Guide on the Wilderness and Spotsylvania battles above, this book shows troop positions as part of the stops on the battlefield tour.  Much preferred so one can orient the troops and see what the discussion highlights.  These are very good guides.

[John Cook]

Campagne de Prusse (1806) – Iena.  P Foucart.  Paris, 1887

This is not a conventional narrative history of the campaign.  It sets out to examine how the Gran Army inflicted such a catastrophic and absolute defeat on the Prussians in so short a time, even by the standards of Napoleonic campaigns generally.  It does so principally through the mind of its commander, and other personalties, reflected in their correspondence and despatches.
 
In simple terms it was a combination of staff procedures, army organisation, logistics and, above all, the personality of its commander.  Napoleon also anticipated the Prussian declaration of war and was already ahead of the game by a month.  This is seen clearly in his correspondence, from which a number of other things become apparent. 

The first is Napoleon's micro-management style.  In addition to being the commander of France's principal army, he was also France's head of State, yet we see him giving detailed orders on the minutiae of the composition of individual regiments, even of the companies within them, and in the next moment corresponding with other heads of state. 

The second is that hardly anything happens without an instruction from him and, third, delegation of responsibility is minimal.  It is a style that leaves little room for individual initiative by subordinates.  Corps commanders were not taken into Napoleon's confidence and were generally ignorant of his plans; they were also often unaware of what other Corps commanders had been ordered to do and during the days when the army concentrated for battle, they were told little more than to move from A to B.

Full of wonderful detail concerning the planning of the campaign, its execution and after-action reports of Corps commanders. 

The author was a member of the Historical Section of the General Staff of the French army when he wrote this study in 1887.  The Historical Section published a number of studies of Napoleonic campaigns between 1884 and 1914 its mission being the education of French officers following the debacle of 1870 with a view to re-learning the principles of war through lessons of the past.

A download of the book can be found here:  Campagne de Prusse (1806) d'après les archives de la guerre : Foucart, Paul Jean, 1852-1923 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

[kipt]

Finished volume 8 of Morison's History of the US Navy, entitled "New Guinea and the Marianas: March 1944 - August 1944".  Next volume goes back to the war in Europe.

[fsn]

Just finished:

Which fills in those bits that get overlooked.

Have just started

Which is literally a heavy tome.

Also reading

... for light relief

[Leman]

Have started reading The Destruction of the Impeerial Army by Grenville Bird, published by Helion. This is volume I of a proposed IV volume set covering just the first couple of months of the Franco-Prussian War. Volume I weighs in at over 500 pages, and covers the pre-war diplomacy through to the withdrawal to the Moselle, so you can imagine it goes into a fair amount of detail with lots of eyewitness accounts (eg the number and calibre of French guns used in the attack on Saarbrucken, the French and Prussian losses in Zeppelin's scouting raid into NE France). As a result I am now familiar with how many small actions and skirmishes took place even before the French attack on Saarbrucken. The writing style is easy to read, but unfortunately there is the odd occasion when one comes across the plague of Helion, incomplete proof reading, such as a 'the' where there shouldn't be one. Despite this for anyone interested in the opening Imperial phase of the FPW this is a fascinating read using many sources, especially French ones, previously unused.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Thanks for the heads up on that Leman

[mollinary]

I have been fortunate enough to meet Grenville on a couple of battlefield tours.  He wears his scholarship lightly, and is a most popular agreeable companion. I have  this book, and heartily recommend it. It's greatest asset is the use of French sources rarely seen in other accounts.