Anyone really into military literature? Recommendations?

[desura]

I'm looking for some good books about life in war. Like, I've read some of Anthony Swafford's Jarhead and it was pretty intense, but also almost a little too "MTV."

Also, it seems like most military buffs are into this German war thinker named Clauswitz or something.

Another book I might check out is Simon Murray's book about being in the French Foreign Legion.

But yeah, anyone into that stuff? recommend?

 

[Charlie98]

Are you looking specifically for military writing or are you open to biographies and such?

 

[desura]

Are you looking specifically for military writing or are you open to biographies and such?

I guess I'd like to see like big picture strategic thinkers as well as gritty real life on the ground accounts.

 

[Charlie98]

As far as biographies and such, I like:

About Face, COL David H Hackworth,
Steel My Soldiers' Hearts, COL David H Hackworth,
Yeager, GEN Chuck Yeager,
Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden,

and I have a few in the 'To Read' pile...

The Coldest Winter (about Korea,)
D-Day, and Band of Brothers (Stephen Ambrose)

I've got more....

 

[tcG]

Philip Caputo - Rumor of War

 

[Braznor]

Hitler's War ----- David Irving.

 

[Gibsons]

Anything by Beevor (I'm not sure about his fiction). Stalingrad will give you a reasonable idea of how bad things were on either side.

 

[Emos]

Anything by Beevor (I'm not sure about his fiction). Stalingrad will give you a reasonable idea of how bad things were on either side.

Stalingrad was excellent. Ivan's War by Catherine Merridale also shows a first hand account of the Red Army grunts in WWII.



Other war books I've read over the last few years that I would recommend:


War by Sebastian Junger - an account of a platoon in Afganistans Korengal Valley

Matterhorn by Karl Malantes - one of the best Vietnam books in my opinion

Tarawa by Robert Sherrod - this was one of the bloodiest battles in the WWII Pacific Theatre and very few Americans know about it. Well worth a read.

Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger - one of the best (if not controversial) novels about the Great War. I liken it a bit to the "evil twin" of All Quite on the Western Front because the author comes away from the experience feeling he got something out of it instead of being absolutely horrified and disillusioned. However he does explain the horror of the trench battles and you try to get an idea of the mindset of soldiers who lived 100 years ago.

 

[pontifex]

-Band of Brothers
-Rogue Warrior
-American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History
-Inside Delta Force: The Story of America's Elite Counterterrorist Unit
-When the Bullet Hits Your Funny Bone: the Essence of a U.S. Navy SEAL
-Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior
-SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper
-The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness World War I: Over 280 First-Hand Accounts of the War to End All Wars
-Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
-Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy Seal
-Soldier and Traveller: Memoirs of Alexander Gardner, Colonel of Artillery in the Service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh
-Helmet for My Pillow
-Eight Lives Down
-Joker One: A Marine Platoon's Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood

I've read a few others but can't think of what they were call now. There was one or 2 with personal stories from US Soldiers in Vietnam, there was another one about special forces - it was like The Mammoth Book of Special forces or something like that.

 

[bononos]

Flags of our fathers

 

[datalink7]

For the war in Iraq, The Good Soldiers by David Finkel:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Good-Soldi...e+good+soldier

When people ask what it was like being in the infantry as part of The Surge into Baghdad from 2007-2008, I hand them a copy of this book (I buy a bunch when it goes on sale for $5.00).

 

[tynopik]

Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World

 

[pyonir]

A couple already mentioned I really enjoyed (copied and pasted):
Philip Caputo - Rumor of War
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

A couple that are first person, on the ground type stuff:
"Nam-Sense: Surviving Vietnam with the 101st Airborne" by Arthur Wiknik
"The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865" by Leander Stillwell

 

[Braznor]

For WW2 German history, David Irving is the king in this regard, too bad his holocaust denial turned him into a pariah.

For the German perspective on WW2, David Irving's books are still supreme, but one needs to take them with a pinch of salt when it comes to the holocaust, but the rest of his military, strategic analysis is pure gold

Many of books are freely available on his website, no man today knows the Nazis as much David does. All of the surviving ones opened up themselves to him completely unlike with the other historians Irving himself has done colossal work when it comes to tracing original documentation and their interpretations, just take some of them with a pinch of salt.

His website :

www.fpp. co.uk

 

[Gibsons]

For WW2 German history, David Irving is the king in this regard, too bad his holocaust denial turned him into a pariah.

For the German perspective on WW2, David Irving's books are still supreme, but one needs to take them with a pinch of salt when it comes to the holocaust, but the rest of his military, strategic analysis is pure gold

Many of books are freely available on his website, no man today knows the Nazis as much David does. All of the surviving ones opened up themselves to him completely unlike with the other historians Irving himself has done colossal work when it comes to tracing original documentation and their interpretations, just take some of them with a pinch of salt.

His website :

www.fpp. co.uk

Not sure if serious.

 

[tynopik]

earlier threads that may be of interest:

Recommend a good book about the Civil War
War readings
Nonfiction Book Recommendations Wanted

 

[Arkaign]

The Terrible Hours is one of the best books of any type I've ever read.

 

[Braznor]

Not sure if serious.

While controversial, his books were rated well at their time. Maybe i should have said a sack of salt.