Book Reviews

I'm an amateur student of history, and particularly of military history. Lately my focus has been on World War II, and as a result I've found myself reading a number of books on the subject. I figured I'd share some of what I've read in the form of book reviews. The purpose of this post is to go over just how I plan to do these reviews.

First, what I won't be doing. I won't be evaulating any works for historical accuracy, at least not based on my own knowledge. I'm a student without access to primary sources, so I have no way of checking accuracy except through comparison with other secondary sources. If I am aware of a problem with a work in this area based on the comments of others, then I will try to bring that up, but it will be a case of hearsay.

Now for what I will be doing. I will discuss in general what a book covers and what its focus is. I will try to give an idea of its writing style and whether or not it's more suitable for a beginner or a more advanced student of the subject at hand.

In order to do this I plan on having three broad classifications: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. A book rated as Beginner will most likely be a well-written book that either gives a broad overview of the war or at least a significant portion of the conflict. Alternatively, a Beginner book might also be a highly readable narrative covering a more focussed topic, such as some of those written by Stephen Ambrose. It will be clear in the review why I rate a particular book as Beginner. Just because I rate a book as Beginner does not mean that it is not useful for a more advanced student, it simply means that it shouldn't put off a beginner with poor writing or a lot of technical language.

Intermediate books will be ones that are more focused than a Beginner book so that it would be useful for someone to first have a basic knowledge of how the subject being discussed fit into the overall war. These books are also likely to include a higher level of detail that might be discouraging to a beginner, but appreciated by someone who already has a working knowledge of the subject. Books that cover a particular campaign or books that are short but detailed might fall into this category. Many of the Osprey or Squadron/Signal publications that narrowly focus on equipment would probably fall into this category. Many post-war memoirs are likely to fall into this category as well. In fact, the majority of written works on WWII would probably end up rated as Intermediate if I took the time to rate them using this system.

Finally, Advanced books will most likely be books with a very high level of detail. These are books that would likely put a beginner to sleep, but which are filled with a wealth of detail that the more advanced student is likely to find fascinating, useful or both. These books unfortunately often suffer from an overly academic, or just plain poor, writing style, which is why I think it is worth clearly identifying them as for advanced study.

I will also try to mention if there is anything specifically applicable to wargaming. Either an explanation of strategy or tactics that help clarify how things work in a game, or the presence of useful orders of battle (OOBs) or maps that could help in planning scenarios or building forces.

There is one more thing that I will be doing that is unrelated to the actual review. If the book is available on Amazon, then I will put a link to it. I do this for two reasons. First, if you click the link to it and actually buy the book then I get paid some for the time I put into working on this site. Second, it gives me an easy way to show the book cover.

Hopefully some of you will get some use out of these reviews. I will be posting the first one soon (although it won't fit the above format exactly as it won't be a history book, although it is WWII related).