Book Review

Book Review: Death Dealer-The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz by Rudolph Höss

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In my office at home I have one shelf on my bookshelf full of books with sticky tabs on the back indicating that I want to read them but have not yet found the time.  When I get the chance I take one down and read it.  Some are books I have had for years and some are new.  This is one of those books. I think like every aspiring historian, I went through a WWII phase in my youth where I read every book about WWII and all its aspects I could find.  Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz by Rudolph Höss has sat on my … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan

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I picked up Peter Zeihan’s The Accidental Superpower because I thought the title was interesting. I did not expect it to be as excellent a book as it is. I actually expected a dry dissertation on geopolitics. It is a dissertation on geopolitics but it is anything but dry. The book itself is 354 pages of text including appendices and includes an introduction, epilogue, and index. It is separated into 15 thematic chapters. The first eight chapters describe the impact of geography on the human settlement and political organization. They also go over how that impact has determined which modern countries and peoples are winners and which are losers. The … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Ring of Steel by Alexander Watson

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author and/or publisher. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Ring of Steel: Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I does for the Germany and Austria-Hungary what Niall Ferguson’s The Pity Of War did for the Allies in WWI.  It explains the war through the lens of the people that participated both at home and at the front and explores the ways in which the experience of war shaped the perception of the war and led to the dissolution of both empires. The book itself is a hefty tome at first … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Longest Afternoon by Brendan Simms

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author and/or publisher. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] There have been hundreds of books written about the battle of Waterloo in the last two centuries.  Most acknowledge that the defense of the two farms at La Haye Saint and Hougemont were decisive in the allied victory.  Curiously, to my knowledge there has not been a microhistory written of the actions in and around the farmhouse of La Haye Saint.  Brendan Simms has rectified that era in his new work The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men Who Decided the … More after the Jump…

CSA PRL Book Review: The Utility of Force by Rupert Smith

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The new 2014 US Army Chief of Staff Professional Reading List (PRL) was released in the Summer of 2014 and I was relieved in the extreme to see that there was only one novel on the list, Once an Eagle by Anton Myrer.  The list is different than earlier lists because it is organized topically instead of by position as earlier lists were.  I have read many of the books on the list already and decided to read the ones I have not and post my thoughts on the books on the list.  This review is the third in that series. The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World is … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Old Soldiers by David Weber

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Old Soldiers is an older book but one I just got around to reading.  It is another foray by David Weber into the Concordiat universe created by Keith Laumer and populated by the sentient AI tanks known as BOLOs.

I you have read Weber’s earlier book Bolo! then you will understand the back story of the two main characters.  Menaka Trevor and the BOLO Lazarus.  Both were featured in a novella in that anthology.  This book picks up after the events in BOLO! with what the Concordiat does with Trevor and Lazarus after they are the only survivors f their battalion following the defense of the planet Chartres against a Melconian attack.

Spoilers below!

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Book Review: The Death of Money-The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System by James Rickards

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The Death of Money: The Coming Collapse of the International Monetary System is one of those topical books that come along every once in a while just at the time you are starting to think about the subject at hand.  I must admit that I probably have a little bit of confirmation bias in my review of this book because I was already thinking much of what he says, I just did not have the hard data to back it up as he does. The book is 302 pages of text separated into three topical parts consisting of eleven chapters and a conclusion.  There are also 18 pages of notes and … More after the Jump…

Book Review: The Month That Changed the World: July 1914 by Gordon Martel

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Given that 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, there has been a virtual flood of new books and scholarship on the war in the past few years. A flood that I sincerely hope does not stop anytime soon as the renewed emphasis on the war is starting to change the traditional view of the war. One area that has gotten particular emphasis this year is the Origins Controversy, as in, what really caused the war and … More after the Jump…

Book Review: A Doctor in the Great War by Andrew Davidson

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author and/or publisher. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Andrew Davidson’s A Doctor in The Great War: Unseen Photographs of Life in the Trenches is part photographic memoir and part unit history. It catalogs the life of his grandfather, Frederick Davidson, as a Royal Army Medical Corps doctor with the 1st Battalion of the regiment of Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) as the battalion medical officer. What makes the book special is that it contains over 250 pictures taken by the author’s grandfather and other officers of the battalion both before and during … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Greece, Crete, Stalag, Dachau- A New Zealand Soldier’s Encounters with Hitler’s Army by Jack Elworthy

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] Greece Crete Stalag Dachau: A New Zealand Soldier’s Encounters with Hitler’s Army by Jack Elworthy is one of those books written by someone with a very interesting tale to tell.  I had heard of Elworthy before getting this book although he was only named once.  The story of the POW who hitched along with the American unit that liberated him to finish the war is mentioned in several mainstream histories of WWII. The book itself is 220 pages of text separated into 33 topical … More after the Jump…

Book Review: House of War by James Carroll

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House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power is one of those books that when you are done reading it you cannot quite decide if it was worth reading or not. If you want to know what history looks like, particularly American history, from the perspective of someone who sees evil and nefarious dealings in just about every single action taken by the United States then this is the book for you. I never thought I would see the day when the Marshall Plan would be described as economic warfare but it is in this book and that is just one example. I found it difficult to … More after the Jump…

Book Review: BOLO! by David Weber

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Bolo! by David Weber is kind of an anthology and kind of a series of related novels, I cannot decide which.  Regardless, it is a solid offering from Weber, of Honorverse fame.  The book is 388 pages and consists of 4 chronologically arranged BOLO stories with an annex on the technical characteristics of the evolution of the BOLO. If you are not familiar with the super tanks known as BOLOs from the books of Keith Laumer this is a good introductory book that will make you want to go read more from Laumer, the guy that invented the concept.  Weber does a solid job of telling these stories as he does … More after the Jump…

CSA PRL Book Review: Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War by Douglas Porch

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The new 2014 US Army Chief of Staff Professional Reading List (PRL) was recently released and I was relieved in the extreme to see that there was only one novel on the list, Once an Eagle by Anton Myrer.  The list is different than earlier lists because it is organized topically instead of by position as earlier lists were.  I have read many of the books on the list already and decided to read the ones I have not and post my thoughts on the books on the list.  This review is the second in that series. After reading Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War by Douglas Porch I am actually surprised … More after the Jump…

CSA PRL Book Review: Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla by David Kilcullen

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The new 2014 US Army Chief of Staff Professional Reading List (PRL) was recently released and I was relieved in the extreme to see that there was only one novel on the list, Once an Eagle by Anton Myrer.  The list is different than earlier lists because it is organized topically instead of by position as earlier lists were.  I have read many of the books on the list already and decided to read the ones I have not and post my thoughts on the books on the list.  This review is the first in that series. Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla by David Kilcullen is at … More after the Jump…

Book Review: Steven Pressfield’s “The Warrior Ethos”: One Marine Officer’s Critique and Counterpoint by Edward Carpenter

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[FULL DISCLOSURE: I received my copy of this book free from the author. I was not paid for this review and the opinion expressed is purely my own] This review is kind of different from what I normally do as it is mainly a review of book written as a critique and alternative to another book.  The main review is of Edward Carpenter’s Steven Pressfield’s “The Warrior Ethos”: One Marine Officer’s Critique and Counterpoint, which is response to the inclusion of The Warrior Ethos on the Marine Corps Professional Reading List a few years ago. That is unfortunate as The Warrior Ethos is essentially a piece of garbage book.  Steven Pressfield is a historical fiction … More after the Jump…

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