WWII books

[Alenci]

Looking for a birthday present and I don't do much reading in this area. Can anyone help me out?

I'm also open to any suggestions about Vietnam or almost any military history books.

Thanks!!

 

[Alenci]

Incidentally, being a savvy internet shopper, I was looking at the Amazon top sellers list in the WWII category and Flags of Our Fathers caught my eye... anybody read it?

 

[Agrippa]

My recommendations for fairly recent stuff that you should be able to find in your local Barnes and Noble are:

Shattered Sword: New look at the Battle of Midway that gives an excellent overview of Japanese carrier doctrine.

Any of Anthony Beevor's works, including Stalingrad, Fall of Berlin, and The Spanish Civil War.

I haven't finished it yet, by Max Hastings' Armageddon has thus far proven a good, scholarly work.

I do tend to avoid the new Stephen Ambrose/Tom Brockaw works, looking for something a bit more analytical, so only go with my recommendations if you're looking for something along those lines.

 

[TScott]

A fascinating book would be Paul Dull's book on the Imperial Japanese Navy in WWII. Professor Dull was given all access to IJN records and came up with a very good book. There have been many books written about the naval war in the Pacific, but this one is through the eyes of the Japanese.

Excellent.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0870210971?v=glance

 

[Alenci]

How about....

Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway ?

Edit: Sorry Agrippa, I didn't notice that you'd mentioned that one!

 

[SH89]

Stephen Ambrose

Ah, what is wrong with Stephen Ambrose?

I have heard that his book on D-Day did not cover the Canadian and British landings well, but Band of Brothers and Citizen Soldiers are great books.

 

[Agrippa]

Ah, what is wrong with Stephen Ambrose?

I have heard that his book on D-Day did not cover the Canadian and British landings well, but Band of Brothers and Citizen Soldiers are great books.

I don't know, I just couldn't get into him as a writer. It may have been all the hype surrounding him, I guess I'm an elitist at heart. Either that or I'm masochistic, you know, just reading the stuff in size 8 font written by old history professor who purposely try to make their books as dull as possible.

Seriously though, I sometimes get deterred by works that are too easy to read. I start mentally equating "interesting" with "not scholarly" even though that is very often not the case.

 

[Alenci]

Either that or I'm masochistic, you know, just reading the stuff in size 8 font written by old history professor who purposely try to make their books as dull as possible.

Seriously though, I sometimes get deterred by works that are too easy to read. I start mentally equating "interesting" with "not scholarly" even though that is very often not the case.

Wow, I wish I had that problem... In the realm of non-fiction, I tend to equate small font, many pages with "dry, boring." :o

 

[wildthing]

Vietnam by Stanley Karnow ISBN 0-14-007324-8

 

[Paladin Dave]

My girlfriend bought me A Bridge Too Far, by Cornelius Ryan for my birthday, and it is really good so far. Its about the war in Holland, primarily in the battle at Arnhem. I am not all that far into it, because of the reading I have to do for school, but I really like what I have read of it. Highly reccommended.

 

[Alenci]

How about "A Rumor of War?"

 

[HiredGoon]

Since you said you're open to almost any military history books, I'd like to recommend one on the American Revolution, Washington's Crossing. David H. Fischer is a great historian, whom I highly recommend. His earlier work on the battles of Lexington and Concord, Paul Revere's Ride, is also excellent.

 

[Alenci]

Sounds fascinating!

 

[Agrippa]

I'll second HiredGoon's recommendation. I though Paul Revere's Ride was the better of the two works, but they were both top notch history. The author is not only a good historian but also a good writer.

 

[Nachtjager]

If it's not too late, "Day of Deceipt" is an outstanding read; it documents very well what FDR knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor before it occurred - should be a required reading book. For pure first-person WWII combat soldier memoirs, it's hard to be Guy Sajer's "The Forgotten Soldier" about being a German soldier on the eastern front. If you want to score big bonus points, pick up the DVD "Saints and Soldiers". It's an outstanding movie about a squad of American GI's who are cut off behind German lines at the start of the Battle of the Bulge and while there is a little bad language in the movie, it has an interesting spiritual overtone in it as well. Two thumbs up for that one if you've got a military history buff guy around!

As for the late great Stephen Ambrose, God forgive me for speaking ill of the dead, but I met him on a number of occasions and I can personally testify I've seldom met a bigger jerk or egomaniac than Stephen Ambrose. I was a founding member of the D-Day Museum and dropped out the first year after I saw how rude and obnoxious he was to the WWII vets who attended the opening ceremonies and came to the museum. And as for his books, they are almost entirely plagiarized from previous works by other authors. Think "Band of Brothers" is something new? Check out "Parachute Infantry" published in 1946 (I believe) - same people, same stories, virtually the same book. Ambrose was actually sued for his last rip-off book (I think it was entitled "The Wild Blue") which was a reprint of a WWII B-24 bomber group's personal unit history published many years ago. The man knew, personally, very little about WWII history, he surrounded himself with people who did and then time and again stole the credit fo their work. Sorry for venting, but Ambrose still gets my back up. Take care and God bless!

 

[VickiY]

I'd also pick up "Don't You Know There's A War On?"

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1560254653/sr=8-11/qid=1146088502/ref=sr_1_11/103-3211882-2463834?%5Fencoding=UTF8

 

[justanobserver]

For historical reading:

We Were Soldiers Once... and Young by Gen Moore and Joe Galloway (US Army, Vietnam)

Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden (US Army, Somalia)

Chicken Hawk by Robert Mason (US Army, Vietnam)

Bat 21 by William Anderson (US Air Force, Vietnam)

excellant novels:

War of the Rats by David Robbins (based on Stalingrad)

Fields of Fire by James Webb (USMC, Vietnam)

And to agree with another in this thread, "The Forgotten Soldier" is excellant reading.

almost forgot - 2 other Non Fiction books on Vietnam: I highly recommend these two for any collection

365 Days by Ronald Glasner (Doctor, US Army Vietman)

Dispatches by Michael Herr (reporter, Vietnam)

 

[Alenci]

Thanks guys!! I wound up buying Washington's Crossing and Stalingrad, both of which were suggested here. I'll keep the rest of your suggestions for the future, or maybe for my own reading...

 

[GrinningDwarf]

If it's not too late, "Day of Deceipt" is an outstanding read; it documents very well what FDR knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor before it occurred - should be a required reading book.

Sorry...but I've read it, and Day of Deceipt should only be required reading to gain an understanding of how trashy, unfounded conspiracy theories work.

Stinnet only used data that supported his position and ignored or massaged everything he used so that it seemed to support his position. He tried to make it seem like Navy cryptologists supported his paranoid theories, but as soon as they saw where his intent was heading they stopped cooperating with him.

This is from a historical (as opposed to fantasy) website on Pearl Harbor:

The hundred or so errors, omissions and misinterpretations Day of Deceit used to try to make its massive conspiracy theory plausible are too numerous to discuss completely here. The author promised cryptologic veterans that he would tell their story, but when their story did not agree with his long held conspiracy theory he rejected that information which destroyed his theories. The book says that LCDR McCollum was part of OP-20-G (What it calls Station US) when he was a mid-level officer in ONI. No implementation of the latter officer's memorandum is ever shown. The book misleads its readers by saying there was only one code (Code Book D or 5num code) when there were two distinct JN-25 codes. The simple one part code JN-25A that was used from 1 July 1939 to 30 November 1941. After 14 months the U.S. Navy cryptologists finally were able to read many of the JN-25A messages. However the new code JN-25B that was used from 1 December 1940 to May 1942 was a much more complicated two part code that was never read before Pearl Harbor except for a few sterotyped messages of no real intelligence value. However the book improperly imputes the final success on JN-25A after 14 months of work to JN-25B.

How can you ever trust a book when such manipulation and deceptive practices are used? Day of Deceit claims the words "Hitokappu Bay" were inserted in a JN-25B message when the decrypted said it was spelled out letter by letter. The reason the Japanese encoder did that was there was no two or three letter geographical designator for that remote location like AF for Midway Island. The book also says the famous message "Climb Mt. Niitaka" was sent in plain language in spite of the clear designation JN-25B denoting its encryption in that system below the heading of the decrypt/translantion.

and...

Robert Stinnett is a long time correspondent of mine. He did a nice job with his history of Preesident George Bush for Pictorial History Pub Co. His long time project on Pearl Harbor was quite a lengthy series of letters. However I was not privy to his revisionist agenda until the book came out.

May I suggest that all need to read much more than his volume and get a balanced view of what the three revisionist "camps" are saying and the flaws in these views and what the facts reveal.

The civilian "camp" was led by a Mr. Beard and has had a huge following to say FDR knew aforehand of the attack. The hard to find volume Perpetual War fdr Perpetual Peace is their bible.

The US Army "camp" was led by Gordon Prange, historian on General MacArthur's staff to keep MacArthur's name clear. See his agenda in his massive volumes.
The US Navy "camp" led in part by Roger Pineau, historian on the staff of Samuel Elliott Morison. See his agenda in Admiral Layton's book.

http://www.pearlharborattacked.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard312a/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=7;t=209