I've just finished "A Bastard of a Place" by my favourite author and historian Peter Brune. I bought the book mainly to help with research for planned diorama on the battle at Milne Bay, 1942.

Just started "Singapore Burning" for research purposes on the service of my Great Grandad who was in Malaya, RAFVR and was captured. Again, I'm in the planning stages of a diorama showing my g-grandad's car being pushed off the wharf and into the ocean to avoid its inevitable capture.

I love reading!

Chas

I'm reading "The Five Fingers" by Gayle Rivers for the umpteenth time. It is the best novel set during the Vietnam war I have read.

Just finished up Fiasco, The Thin Red Line, and The Jungle. All incredible reads in their own right.

Just starting up What is the What, a fictional story based on real life accounts of a refugee from Sudan.

Hi, I am reading Tools of the Trade-Equipping the Canadian Army. This is by Service Publications and is excellent. Highly recommend it to anyone who is into the Canadian Army in WW2. It covers all small arms as well as soft skins and Tanks, Arty, ETC

Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece
I've been reading it every night before going to sleep.
http://www.amazon.com/Johnny-Cash-Folsom-Prison-Masterpiece/dp/0306813386
Very interesting story and details about his life and career.

I just got a book off eBay..."Boots On the Ground" by Karl Zinsmeister. Karl is a frontline reporter embedded with the 82nd Airborne. His account of the war cover a month long march from Kuwait to Iraq's Tallil Air Base.

Joe

I'm just getting ready to start III. Pz Korps at Kursk. I'll do a review of the book next month.
Joe

It is called 15 days. It is stories of Canadian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan.

Finished Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, a semi autobiographical look of growing up in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950's. Now I'm reading another book about growing up inthe 50's, but a much darker (and true story). It's called The State Boys Rebellion and chronicles the lives of several young men from indigent or abussive homes who were committed to Fernald State School, just west of Boston, during the late 40's. Parts are really hard as it talks of hte physical and sexual abuse heaped on these young men. While parents of retarded clients in these facilities would visit them, these boys were abandoned and had to survive the system on their own wits.

i've got a few to start,

the red baron-peter kilduff
six days of the condor-james grady
and a couple of phillip k dick sci fi books.

I'm currently reading "Day of Battle" by Rick Atkinson. It is part 2 of the "Liberation" trilogy.



I also recently bought Tigers In Combat I and Tigers In Combat II by Wolfgang Schneider



I also have this one in the stack but the others above are priority reading.



All images are from Amazon.Com. I buy all of my books from Amazon and some from the Military Book Club. I have had flawless service from both.

'The road to Berlin' by John Erickson. Finished 'The road to Stalingrad' a few weeks ago, obviously at the second attempt as I found a bookmark dating back to 1997 about a third of the way through the book

David

I'm reading Death Traps By Shelton Cooper. It is the memoirs of a 3rd Armoured Division recovery and maintenance leutenant, who was posted to CCB during the breakout at St Lo right through to the end of the war. Essential reading!

My readings are currently all studies related (papers due):

Reading right now:

Griffin - Nature of fascism
Paxton - Anatomy of fascism
Payne - History of fascim
Griffin/Loh/Umland - Fascism past and present, East and West
Paper due tomorrow 23:59

Reading right thereafter next week:

Black - rethinking military history
Black - various other books
Books about ancient warfare, + Herodotos, Arrian, Ammianus Marcellinus and Thucydides
All these paper-related (due in two weeks).

Somewhere in between:

Treadgold - Byzantium and its army
Various - Aspects of the Notitia Dignitatum

Reviews due somewhere next month

Then: no idea yet.

I'm reading two at the moment. Time to Hunt by Stephen Hunter, which is fiction, about a sniper in Vietnam. He's the author of Master Sniper , which was about a Waffen-SS sniper and was great.



And the other is Sterling's Men by Gavin Mortimer, about the enlisted men of the WW2 SAS.

Just got through with two very insightful Biographies:

Patton A Genius of war.. By D'estes Gives you a side of Patton that I certainly didn't know existed.

A Soldiers Story. by Omar Bradley. Was interesting to see how all these historical figures( Patton, Ike, Monty, et al) meshed togather during the war..

Now working on Beyond Band of Brothers. The Memoirs of Maj Dick Winters. This is a real page turnier all in itself as well.

I also have waiting in the wings A Time for Trumpets. The untold story of the Battle of the Bulge. As told by the American and German side at the battalion level.. Should be a great read although it is awfully fat...

Currently TAIL END CHARLIES very good book about the ..... well the title says it all..

I'm currently reading 'The 12th SS- History of the Hitler Youth Panzer Division Volume 2' by Hubert Meyer and part of the Stackpole Military History series. If this is your subject then you have probably read these two excellent volumes.

Hubert Meyer's style casts broad strokes over the life of the 'HJ' but is at the same time very intimate with personal accounts relating to the event being highlighted. It is very passionate as you would expect from Meyer and very thorough in sofar as it can be with written documentation sometimes being very sketchy from this period.

Recommended...

I just finished reading ,(2nd time),The Five Fingers about 2 weeks ago, Awesome Read ! Now I'm just starting War On the Eastern Front by James Lucas.... milvehfan

Right now I am reading “Soldat” by Siegfried Knappe. He was a soldier in the German army during the war and one of the last people to see Hitler alive. He helped with the German film “Downfall.”

Both are very good and if you get a chance to see Downfall, watch it.

I am currently reading "Patton and Rommel"
Hard reading but really cool to look at the simularietes of both of them.

thxs,
John

"The Rivers of War" by Eric Flint, an interesting alt history

Nearing the end of Robewrt Leckie's A few Acres of Snow, A Saga of the French and Indian Wars. The author has quite a unigue point of view. If he likes a person or a people, he can't lavish enough praise on them. If he dislikes someone or a group, he can't malign them enough. The next two books on my list are The Good Regiment chronicling the history of the Carrigan-Salieres Regiment sent to New France by Louis to quell the Iroquois. I am the direct descendent, on my father's side, of one of these men. Also on the list is Captors and Captives chronicling the 1704 raid on Deerfield MA. Again, a directr ancestor, this time on my mother's mother's line, was captured there and converted to Catholocism and remained in New France. Her father returned and is buried in Deerfield.

Well, I just read "Empire" by Orson Scott Card, and I can't believe I had the tenacity to finish it. At least it was a library book, and not something I shelled out my hard earned for. Now, I've read other books by Card, and I thought they were pretty good, but not this. I should have known it was going to be awful when I found out it was based on a video game. Learning that a movie or book is based on a video game is never a good sign.
"Empire" is supposed to be about a second American Civil War in the near future, between the Reds and Blues (right-wingers vs. left-wingers, for non-American readers), but the conflict just sort of flickers, except for one brief fight; it just never seems to burst into flames.
I guess I expected, you know, a WAR, like the real Civil War, but fought with modern weapons: tanks, APCs, artillery, warships fighting great sea battles, dogfighting jets, army divisions maneuvering and clashing like they did when Blue fought Gray. I was terribly let down.
A hypothetical future Red-Blue American civil war is an interesting plot idea. But this novel will have to be written by a Harold Coyle or Tom Clancy, to be done full justice.

I'm reading With The Old Breed by Eugene Sledge....Vince