Recommended Reading & Viewing

SWJ Blog – The Generals… Readable but Flawed?

In his groundbreaking 1976 book The Face of Battle, eminent historian John Keegan argued that the history of battle should focus on more than the generals and their decisions.

Keegan had grown weary of military histories explaining the outcome of battles and wars singularly on what generals decided. Instead, Keegan emphasized the complexity of battle, its chaos, and most importantly the role contingent factors played in the outcome of battles and wars.

Keegan’s book helped popularize what would become known as the “new military history” that sought to explain and understand warfare not solely through the eyes of the general, but from myriad other military, social, cultural, and political factors.

Tom Ricks’s new book The Generals regresses from Keegan and takes us back to a less complicated form of military storytelling in which wars’ outcomes were determined solely by the performance of army commanders.

HistoryGuy99 –The Liberator: One Soldier’s 500-Day Odyssy across Nazi Europe 

A few months ago I learned that best selling author, Alex Kershaw, was about to publish a new book about World War II. Alex, had already gained a reputation for his accurate portrayal of war in three earlier best selling books. When his latest, The Liberator  arrived, it immediately went to the top of my growing must read pile. where within a fortnight; I settled down to read about one man’s 511 day and 2000 mile journey across the blood stained surface of Nazi held Europe. The story is more than one mans journey, but describes in moving detail, the men of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Regt. of the 45th Infantry Division, who fought from the beaches of Sicily, on to Salerno, and Anzio, then into the belly of Vichy France and into the deadly forests of Vosges; and finally ending inside the hell of Dachau, where to a man, they reached their breaking point.

The Glittering Eye – How Not to Negotiate 

….My understanding is that the president’s proposals rest on three legs:

1. Raise taxes on the highest income earners while leaving the remainder of the “Bush tax cuts” intact.
2. Leave Social Security and Medicare alone.
3. Make raising the debt ceiling automatic.

I wasn’t entirely surprised at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s reaction (he broke out laughing). My immediate reaction was that the president had opened with the insult price.

Milpub (Seydlitz89) –Fall 1942 – The Turning Point of the War in Europe 

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