Historical Book Recomendation Thread

[Imaus]

Yeah, the Peninsular Campaign was both a massive drain on the resources and reputation of Napoleon's Empire. From 1808 to 1814 significant resources had to be devoted to Spain while Napoleon could not come personally to take command for most of the campaign because of the tenuous situation in Central Europe. Repeated frustrations in Spain also helped to break the veneer of French invincibility and encourage Napoleon's enemies to re-enter the war and launch aggressive campaigns against Napoleon's Empire. From the beginning of the Spanish campaign to the fall of Paris France would never know peace, it would always have an active land war.

So Spain was France's soft underbelly...maybe he should had bit the bullet and personally led a campaign or two.

 

[JohannaK]

He did, but it made no great difference in the end.

 

[Agent327]

This thread needs more books.

Like, I don't know, part 3 of the momentous Thatcher biography just completed by a British journalist. According to the NYT Book Review it's not the definite biogrpahy (what ever is?), but dfinitely a Fundgrube for any historian with similar interests..

Or this book on Pliny:

9quote]
THE SHADOW OF VESUVIUS

A Life of Pliny

By Daisy Dunn[/quote]

As the reviewer, a classicist, reminds us,

There were actually two Roman writers named Pliny — the Elder and the Younger, as they were known; an uncle and his nephew — and I could never keep them straight, let alone understand why they were worth studying.

Well, that's were this dual biography comes in.

Pliny the Elder, born around A.D. 24, was a polymath, the sort of person who rarely slept and could never sit still. He was a naturalist and a philosopher, a soldier and an admiral, and a tireless writer, who turned out close to 100 books. Of these, only one survives, “Natural History,” a 37-volume encyclopedia that purported to contain all that was then known about the world. It’s from this magpie-like collection of facts that we get the notion of information “in a nutshell” (Pliny had heard of a complete manuscript of the “Iliad” that could fit in one) and the idea that elephants are afraid of mice.

Now it could be me, but collecting nonsense does not a polymath make - whether he can sit still or not. But anayway, as some of you may know the elder Pliny died trying to investigate the eruption of Vesuvius in the late first century. And we know thsi, because the younger Pliny mentioned it in one of his many letter, some 30 years later, writing to Tacitus. These letters often ended up in anthologies and this is how we today know of them - and do know a lot more about the pedantic lawyer, the younger Pliny than about the supposedly polymathic elder Pliny.

The reason I knew of the younger Pliny is that he was

Appointed imperial legate to Bithynia, in what is now northern Turkey, Pliny was taken aback by how many Christians were there and decided to round them all up, relying on secret informers, and eradicate them or make them recant. The emperor counseled moderation — punishment maybe, but no informers, no roundups — in part, it seems, because he wasn’t exactly sure what Christians were guilty of.

Except I remember Pliny asking for advice in the matter rather than suggest how to proceed. Which also seems more in line with the fact that he wrote various letters to Trajan (the emperor in question), as well as a highly flattering Panegyric to the same.And it's these surviving letters that give us some interesting insight in Roman life and the empire around 100 AD.

So was Pliny the elder the more interesting of the two? Who knows, it's the younger Pliny that gives us most of the information we have on both.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Now it could be me, but collecting nonsense does not a polymath make - whether he can sit still or not.

He wouldn't have known it was nonsense. The rest of his resume as given in your quote fits with being a polymath though.

 

[Loerwyn]

Evening everyone. I've two questions:

1. English books on Polish history seem pretty few and far between. I have Zamoyski's Poland, but other than that it largely seems to consist of books about the German-Polish war and the subsequent genocides that occured during WW2. I'm not expecting someone to point out a 400pg, accessible book on Jadwiga (okay seriously if someone manages that I WILL MARRY YOU), but greater depth on pre-industrial Poland would be pretty cool.
2. If it's okay, could I post a photo of my newly-organised factual bookshelf and get recommendations on similar books that would fit in?

 

[Ajidica]

Evening everyone. I've two questions:

1. English books on Polish history seem pretty few and far between. I have Zamoyski's Poland, but other than that it largely seems to consist of books about the German-Polish war and the subsequent genocides that occured during WW2. I'm not expecting someone to point out a 400pg, accessible book on Jadwiga (okay seriously if someone manages that I WILL MARRY YOU), but greater depth on pre-industrial Poland would be pretty cool.

Have you tried stuff like the Oxford History of Poland?
https://www.amazon.com/Oxford-Histo...0207/ref=mt_paperback?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=
Or Cambridge Medieval Textbook, Central Europe in the High Middle Ages?
https://www.amazon.com/Central-Europe-Cambridge-Medieval-Textbooks/dp/0521786959
Oxford only only seem to have the first volume published, but it should give you a good starting point for authors in browsing the bibliography. I recommend looking for books put out by large university presses (Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, etc). Compilation books are particularly good as they have different authors writing essays on various sub-topics they specialize in so you can find other books but out by specific authors on topics you want to learn more about.
Also, check to see if Zamoyski's book has a 'Further Reading' section in the back separate from the Bibliography. Many authors writing broad histories will list some modern and approachable books on certain topics, as Bibliographies tend to be very scholarly.

 

[Loerwyn]

Thank you!

 

[Agent327]

He wouldn't have known it was nonsense. The rest of his resume as given in your quote fits with being a polymath though.

Not really. Merriam-Webster gives the meaning as ' a person of encyclopedic learning'. That's not the same as writing endlessly on all kinds of subjects/ And knowing if something is nonsense is pretty much the definition of 'learning'.

Actual polymaths had (it's kind of impossible in this day and age) both a wide interest and wrote sensible things on all of those interests. Which is not quite the same as collecting known facts about just about everything there is. To wit, the e,cyclopédistes were not polymaths. But, as Pliny shows, they also didn't invent the encyclopedia. The difference is, the encyclpédistes (supposedly) provided actual knowledge. And thsi is why we still have encyclopedias, not because Pliny.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Not really. Merriam-Webster gives the meaning as ' a person of encyclopedic learning'. That's not the same as writing endlessly on all kinds of subjects

I'm failing to see the distinction here.

 

[Agent327]

Learning means knowledge Knowledge is something else than writing down hearsay. Because if it wasn't Donald J. Trump would qualify as a polymath ratehr than an ignoramus.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

We're talking about a dude that lived practically in the stone age. There was no other way of getting information than hearsay and no way to vet it. But going out of your way to learn as much about the world as you can to the extent that we're still talking about you and your works centuries later would in my opinion qualify someone as a polymath. You're trying to shoe horn him into a modern context that doesn't fit. Donald Trump has the body of scientific knowledge at his fingertips.

 

[IglooDame]

Book recommendation:
Shattered Sword, by Parshall & Tully. An account and analysis of the Battle of Midway focusing on the Japanese perspective, and keyed not on Fuchida's postwar account but on, essentially, all other sources including ship and squadron logs and firsthand accounts. It's scholarly but reads really well, the authors have a pretty dry sense of humor and it occasionally is visible. Among lots of other things, I learned that Tone's seaplane pilot that took off late and was late and unclear with reports wasn't truly as important to the result of the battle as popularly thought.

 

[JohannaK]

It does sound right up your alley. I've heard good things of it before.

 

[Gelion]

Book recommendation:
Shattered Sword, by Parshall & Tully. An account and analysis of the Battle of Midway focusing on the Japanese perspective, and keyed not on Fuchida's postwar account but on, essentially, all other sources including ship and squadron logs and firsthand accounts. It's scholarly but reads really well, the authors have a pretty dry sense of humor and it occasionally is visible. Among lots of other things, I learned that Tone's seaplane pilot that took off late and was late and unclear with reports wasn't truly as important to the result of the battle as popularly thought.

If some people still don't know, there's an excellent video to go with it.

 

[Truthy]

Book recommendation:
Shattered Sword, by Parshall & Tully. An account and analysis of the Battle of Midway focusing on the Japanese perspective, and keyed not on Fuchida's postwar account but on, essentially, all other sources including ship and squadron logs and firsthand accounts. It's scholarly but reads really well, the authors have a pretty dry sense of humor and it occasionally is visible. Among lots of other things, I learned that Tone's seaplane pilot that took off late and was late and unclear with reports wasn't truly as important to the result of the battle as popularly thought.

I read this as well. It's one of the best books I've read recently. Though it focuses on just one battle, it gives a lot of insights into the institutional and military-cultural problems that were endemic to Japan's war effort throughout the Pacific War. It also has some really interesting and vivid accounts of what it was like being on the Japanese carriers during the battle.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Anyone have recommendations for books about the Eastern Front of WW2 in general? Specifically something that's up to date with the historical consensus and provides a good overview of tactics and strategy? Economics-y angles are good too.

I see some books like "When Titans Clashed" get recommended a lot. But that's from 1995. I imagine quite a lot of new info has come out since then as historians have had time to comb through Soviet records. However, I see a revised edition was released in 2015. So perhaps it's still a solid single-volume read?

New to this Thread, so sorry for the late reply, but the Eastern Front (or "Great Patriotic War" to the Russians) covers a large part of my bookshelves.

First, generally, Anything by David Glantz. He is the master of the Eastern Front in English, over 60 books out, and was just about the first westerner to dive deeply into the Soviet archives. He co-wrote When Titans Clashed, and it's still a good one-volume summary of the campaigns.

Other good general works that make good use of both German and Russian sources are:

Bellamy, Chris Absolute War. 2007
- Bellamy uses a lot of current Russian and German historians as sources, so gets to 'piggy back' on a lot of post-Soviet archival research

Erickson, John, Road to Stalingrad and Road to Berlin
-Erickson was the first western author to make thorough use of the Soviet material available. They are a little 'long in the tooth' now, but solid works still

Rees, Laurence War of the Century 1999
- starting to show its age, but a lot of personal detail - mostly German, unfortunately.

Germany in the Second World War
- this is the translation of Deutschland im Zweiten Weltkrieg, the 'official' multi-volume German history of the entire war, written by the Military History Research Department in Potsdam and available (some of the volumes, anyway) in English. Massive detail, including essays on the economics, politics, diplomacy, as well as the military aspects. Great use of the German archves, but also a lot of material from post-Soviet Russian works as well.

On more specific topics:

Glantz has done multi-volume works on Smolensk (Barbarossa Derailed), the Stalingrad Campaign, and the Battle of Kursk, all of which are superb. The complete sets on Smolensk and Stalingrad, though, will fill an entire bookcase!

However, the best book on the great tank battle at Kursk is:
Zamulin, Valeri Demolishing the Myth - Zamulin was the director of the battlefield museum at Prokhorovka where the 'great tank battle' took place, and this is a translation of his work on the subject in Russian. Incredible detail, incredible access to archive source material

Luther, Craig Barbarossa Unleashed. 2013
Luther spent most of his academic career mining German source material, but in this book he also accessed the huge trove of Russian veteran's accounts from Artem Drabkin's website (iremember.ru) and this is as up close and personal an account as you will find from both sides.

Lopukhovsky, Lev The Viaz'ma Catastrophe 2013.
- Lev wrote this book originally because his father died in this great encirclement battle, but since he was himself a Soviet officer he got unprecedented access to the Soviet/Russian archives - and he taught German, so he had good access to German material as well. I doubt that anyone will ever be able to cover this battle in front of Moscow better.

Finally, for an example of what can be done with the archives from both sides now even on a very narrow topic:
Radey, Jack and Charles Sharp The Defense of Moscow, the Northern Flank. 2012
- a book focusing entirely on the fighting around Kalinin, northwest of Moscow (modern Tver') during the last half of October 1941. Now able to access the War Diaries of all the German units and the Combat Journals and many veteran's accounts from the Soviet units involved, they were able to cover the fighting literally day by day and in some places hour by hour. It reveals a 'battle of Moscow' completely different from what everybody thinks they know about it.
Full Disclosure: my name is Sharp and about a third of my own library on WWII is in German or Russian . . .

 

[innonimatu]

Luther, Craig Barbarossa Unleashed. 2013
Luther spent most of his academic career mining German source material, but in this book he also accessed the huge trove of Russian veteran's accounts from Artem Drabkin's website (iremember.ru) and this is as up close and personal an account as you will find from both sides.

Lopukhovsky, Lev The Viaz'ma Catastrophe 2013.
- Lev wrote this book originally because his father died in this great encirclement battle, but since he was himself a Soviet officer he got unprecedented access to the Soviet/Russian archives - and he taught German, so he had good access to German material as well. I doubt that anyone will ever be able to cover this battle in front of Moscow better.

Finally, for an example of what can be done with the archives from both sides now even on a very narrow topic:
Radey, Jack and Charles Sharp The Defense of Moscow, the Northern Flank. 2012
- a book focusing entirely on the fighting around Kalinin, northwest of Moscow (modern Tver') during the last half of October 1941. Now able to access the War Diaries of all the German units and the Combat Journals and many veteran's accounts from the Soviet units involved, they were able to cover the fighting literally day by day and in some places hour by hour. It reveals a 'battle of Moscow' completely different from what everybody thinks they know about it.
Full Disclosure: my name is Sharp and about a third of my own library on WWII is in German or Russian . . .

Hi. Thanks for all these recommendations. I don't hope to ever pick more than one of tho of these books, but... shameless opportunistic question: from what you read, how exhausted were the soviets by late 1941.

There's always people saying "if Hitler had put more resources into the central group instead of the south, Moscow would have been captured and that would have been a big blow". I've always been skeptical of that idea, because logistics (men and material can't just be put into a place, they require the logistic to support them) and because the Soviets likewise could have redeployed. Moscow was well served by railways, my guess is that its concentrated defense would arguably be easier than defending Ukraine.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Hi. Thanks for all these recommendations. I don't hope to ever pick more than one of tho of these books, but... shameless opportunistic question: from what you read, how exhausted were the soviets by late 1941.

There's always people saying "if Hitler had put more resources into the central group instead of the south, Moscow would have been captured and that would have been a big blow". I've always been skeptical of that idea, because logistics (men and material can't just be put into a place, they require the logistic to support them) and because the Soviets likewise could have redeployed. Moscow was well served by railways, my guess is that its concentrated defense would arguably be easier than defending Ukraine.

Everybody looks at the excellence of the German military in tactical combat and maneuver and forgets that they were almost hopeless when it came to strategic support and logistics (Fun Fact: the word "logistics" didn't even appear in German until After the war). Before they even started the war, Wagner, the Oberquartermeister (Supply Officer) for the entire Wehrmacht, warned the German General Staff that Germany had stockpiled enough fuel for 3 months' of combat. Period. After that, they could not sustain mobile operations at all, because they would burn more fuel each week than they could possibly supply from Europe. Sure enough, 3 months were up at the end of September, and when the attack on Moscow started on 2 October, within 48 hours over half the panzer divisions involved were complaining about lack of fuel hampering their mobility.

The argument that Army Group Center should have kept on advancing after the Battle of Smolensk and gone straight for Moscow overlooks two Facts:
1. When that battle ended in early August Army Group Center was Out of Supply: both fuel and ammunition stocks were exhausted, and any advance was going to be made on foot, without artillery - meaning they weren't going anywhere.
2. From early August it was the Soviet forces between Smolensk and Moscow that were attacking, not the Germans. These attacks were clumsy and they suffered horrible casualties, but they also mauled several German divisions (129th and 167th Infantry Divisions each had to disband 3 out of 9 infantry battalions because of casualties, and 7th Panzer Division lost 1/3 of its tanks in less than a week of combat)
In the event, for the Typhoon operation that started at the end of September against Moscow, the Germans did mass just about everything they had: 1.9 million men, 14 out of the 19 panzer divisions on the entire Eastern Front. That offensive achieved encirclements at Vyazma and Bryansk within a week that combined to produce one of the greatest tactical victories of the war - and by the end of October 1941 that offensive had collapsed everywhere: 2nd Panzer Army was stuck in front of Tula, far to the south and over 100 km from Moscow, 9th and 2nd Armies were guarding the flanks, 3rd Panzer Group was fighting off Soviet attacks coming at them from all sides in Kalinin to the north, and in 4th Panzer Group and 4th Army, the main forces actually directly attacking towards Moscow, at the end of October in all the supply depots servicing those forces, there was enough fuel left to move one panzer division 60 kilometers - and they were over 75 kilometers from the outskirts of Moscow. More disturbing to the Germans and their post-war apologists, at the end of October the average rifle company in 4th Army and 4th Panzer Group had just 57 officers and men left - out of 185 authorized.
Quite simply, the Germans massed everything they had as soon as they could supply it for an attack, and both the supply and the attack collapsed utterly due to Germany's inability to maintain the support and sheer casualties inflicted on them by the Red Army.

Oh, and at the end of October, when the German commanders from Halder in Berlin down to individual division commanders were all chanting that the "last battalion" would decide the issue, the Soviet Stavka was issuing orders for 8 new Reserve Armies to form up to the east, northeast and southeast of Moscow. When the Germans resumed their attack in mid-November, they had as much chance of taking Moscow as they had of taking Honolulu.

Another very good author who has covered the German operations in 1941 and specifically the battles at Kiev and Moscow in detail is David Stahel. He's an Australian historian who got his degree from Humboldt University in Berlin and made very good use of the German archives to lay out what really happened between 22 June 1941 and the end of that year. He is also a very good, very readable writer and most, if not all, of his books are now available in paperback.

 

[innonimatu]

Thank you, that was enlightening!

 

[PhroX]

It's worth noting that, to my understanding, many of the "The Nazi's would've beaten the Soviets if only Hitler hadn't given order xyz..." claims come from the post war journals of Nazi commanders, whos accounts went relatively unquestioned for many years, despite tham having a huge vested interest in making themsleves look good and Hitler look bad (especially as the latter was obviously in no position to refute them).