The Military History Group discussion

I thought I’d start a new thread and ask what everyone is reading right now?

I am currently reading a book called “Meade at Gettysburg: A study in command”, by Kent Masterson Brown. It’s really good, and I am using “The Maps of Gettysburg: An Atlas of the Gettysburg Campaign, June 3 - July 13, 1863” to follow along with the narrative.

Hit Parade (Lawrence Block)

I do not mean any disrespect to anyone posting nor am I being stupid or sarcastic but could it clarified when posting on this thread of 'What we are currently reading?' do you intend for any book we might be reading or is it intended to be books which are of a military history type?

I, like many in this group I am sure, read lots of different types of books but are they all relevant to this thread? I wouldn't have thought so but I am happy to be told otherwise.

Just finished Green on Blue, a short novel that many reviewers rated pretty low; however, my take was different, and thought it was an excellent fictional rendering of not only the war in Afghanistan but of the human complexities of war in general. It focuses on a young soldier in the Afghan Army: his childhood, recruitment, training, and combat experience. As the title foretells, and which for many will be uncomfortable/find objectionable, it deals with the issue of green-on-blue, but where some reviews fault it for a lack of character development, I found that not to be the case whatsoever. In summary, it gives the reader insight to another side of the war, one which we are less familiar, and it sheds light on why counter-insurgent war in harsh environment with a multifaceted, foreign (to westerners) culture is so hard to conduct and win.

I am about halfway through Empires of the Normans: Conquerors of Europe, which covers the wide-ranging geopolitical and military expansion of the Normans. Pulls together in one volume the role of Normans in Europe, the Mediterranean, and Middle East starting in the 10th century. Best part for me so far was learning about Robert Guiscard, “Terror of the World.” Am wondering if anyone has read the fiction book by Jack Ludlow, “Mercenaries.” This novel evidently centers around Robert and his brothers.

Liam wrote: "I do not mean any disrespect to anyone posting nor am I being stupid or sarcastic but could it clarified when posting on this thread of 'What we are currently reading?' do you intend for any book w..."

Liam, I can tell you what I do, although this is not official. The more general the group, here at Goodreads or at LibraryThing, the more likely I am to “go wide” on what I post; and of course, I try to follow the guidelines in the group and thread descriptions. For more specialized groups such as this, even absent guidelines, I keep my posts to books that fit the subject / genre.

By the way, there are two threads on this “currently reading” topic, maybe they could be merged? 🤔

Patrick wrote: "Liam wrote: "I do not mean any disrespect to anyone posting nor am I being stupid or sarcastic but could it clarified when posting on this thread of 'What we are currently reading?' do you intend f..."

Same here. I currently am reading a mix (I read several at once, some audio, some digital, some paper; upstairs, downstairs, on my phone, tablet...you get my drift,) of several genres. The only one I can remotely call military history is Tim Egan's A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, which deals with the homegrown terrorist/paramilitary organization, the KKK. I have a bunch of military history in my queue, along with a bunch of other stuff.

Patrick wrote: "Liam wrote: "I do not mean any disrespect to anyone posting nor am I being stupid or sarcastic but could it clarified when posting on this thread of 'What we are currently reading?' do you intend f..."

I didn't know there were two threads, or maybe I did and forgot! But I appreciate your answer because I read books that relate to military history - non fiction and fiction - but also many others and it seemed to me, because I learn a great deal from other posts on subjects I know little about, and books I might want to read, the books mentioned should be on topic - again thanks for your response.

Donna wrote: "Patrick wrote: "Liam wrote: "I do not mean any disrespect to anyone posting nor am I being stupid or sarcastic but could it clarified when posting on this thread of 'What we are currently reading?'..."

Thank you for the response - I am waiting to see if any library gets a copy of 'Fear in the Heartland' because I really want to read it and as yet it hasn't been published in the UK (that may have changed - I'm always out of date on such things!) otherwise I'll have to buy it and as I can't buy everything I'll have to fit it in towards the top of my buy list! I look forward to your review as I am interested in what you think.

In 1903, members of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization were often considered terrorists, and some later specifically described themselves as terrorists: killers for a cause. But by 1948, many wars and struggles later, the surviving elderly veterans of the group were retrospectively considered freedom fighters by the new Yugoslav Macedonian government, and were invited to apply for pension recognition. Although the shift in categorization from terrorist to freedom fighter is not Keith Brown's specific or overriding subject in his fine monograph, Loyal Unto Death: Trust and Terror in Revolutionary Macedonia, it hovered in my mind throughout my reading of the book, probably because it is an issue that has obvious contemporary relevance and that will never be fully settled to everyone's satisfaction. The linchpin seems to be that if one approves of the goals of a revolutionary organization, one has moved some way towards excusing its methods, and in re-defining terrorists as freedom fighters.

Brown's study is specialized, but quite readable. He uses up-to-date historical and anthropological concepts without getting bogged down in impenetrable language or overly convoluted relations of ideas. He also does not commit the common sin of sniffily dismissing earlier literature on his topic - in fact, he mines such writing, both academic and popular, for all it is worth, and in a very respectful spirit. His chief sources are archival - the aforementioned pension applications, and British Foreign Office records. His goal is to trace the internal workings of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization through anthropological analysis. The promotional copy for the book lays out the project well: "Keith Brown focuses on social and cultural mechanisms of loyalty to describe the circuits of trust and terror--webs of secret communications and bonds of solidarity--that linked migrant workers, remote villagers, and their leaders in common cause. Loyalties were covertly created and maintained through acts of oath-taking, record-keeping, arms-trading, and in the use and management of deadly violence."

Brown has some pointed things to say about the interpretation of past events in the Balkans through a prism of contemporary ethno-nationalism, even suggesting that it was not an ESSENTIAL goal of the MRO to replace one "distant" governing authority, the Ottoman Empire, with another, localized government that would presumably be more representative of and responsive to the people. He calls this skepticism "thinking past the nation," borrowing a term from Arjun Appadurai, and he draws on James Scott's work on traditional forms of "anarchist" resistance to "being governed" to elucidate the theme. I can identify this as an area where experts will debate his conclusions, without claiming any competence to make a judgment on them myself.

The readership for a work of academic history such as this, driven by analysis rather than narrative, is naturally somewhat circumscribed, but it could be larger than it is. Enthusiastic readers of "popular history" ought not to be overly wary of tackling more advanced analyses which will help them to understand historical events in a different, more complex way, and in fact this book is a perfectly recommendable one in that respect, because it is challenging without being inaccessible to the typical educated reader. Brown opens up the concepts that he uses in a way that invites further curiosity, rather than shutting it down, and his very ample bibliography offers many avenues for additional exploration.

I have 3 h of listening left for the book on racism during Vietnam war , Race in the Crucible of War: African American Servicemen and the War in Vietnam by Gerald F. Goodwin

Darya Silman wrote: "I have 3 h of listening left for the book on racism during Vietnam war , Race in the Crucible of War: African American Servicemen and the War in Vietnam by [author:Gerald F. Goodwin..."

Thanks for the spotlight on this book which is now one of my top TBR books.

Patrick wrote: "In 1903, members of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization were often considered terrorists, and some later specifically described themselves as terrorists: killers for a cause. But by 1948, man..."

Excellent review and I am particularly grateful because I would probably not have found this book - it sounds fascinating and exactly what the best kind of academic history can provide - an insight into a whole new perspective on the past from digging into the dull minutia. This is so useful in the Balkans which has more 'stories' propounded as facts by writers who can't speak any local language.

Your comments on 'terrorism' were also thought provoking because those of us who lived in the London in the 1980's can remember a time when American citizens happily donated money to a terrorist organisation which blew up bombs on London streets and raucously celebrated the death toll of those bombs. Of course now those same people would think very differently about terrorism - but what exactly has changed?

^ Thank you for the kind words! Admittedly not every academic book is so rewarding to the general reader, but it is always a pleasure to come across one. I read this book “on a flier”; I spotted it in a search at my Scribd account and thought, well that sounds interesting, let’s try a couple of chapters. And it passed that test easily!

I love history books of the past because they were not written for us, nor with our preoccupations in mind; they had no way of knowing what our preoccupations would BE. They do provide a sense of the time when they were written, as well as the specific past they were written about. I don’t generally see them as “superseded”; they are informative. Whether the theory-ridden, hectoring books of today will hold up as well remains to be seen. 

The 50-volume Chronicles of America series published by Yale University Press in 1918 makes for delightful reading, and are very handsome hand-sized volumes as well. I have read Charles M. Andrews’ Colonial Folkways: A Chronicle of American Life in the Reign of the Georges and Maud Wilder Goodwin’s Dutch and English on the Hudson: A Chronicle of Colonial New York, and am just about to start Emerson Hough’s The Passing of the Frontier; A Chronicle of the Old West.

I am reading the States and the Nation series of bicentennial histories; ex-library copies can be had very inexpensively. (I get this uneasy feeling that libraries don’t hold onto anything anymore, but are in a constant itch to deaccession.)

I read North Dakota first, because who knows anything about North Dakota? And it was fascinating. Now I am starting South Carolina, because my sister was until recently living in Charleston. And I have New Hampshire in my possession.

A nice feature of the series is the inclusion of a photographic essay about the state in each volume. The notes and bibliographies are excellent, and are hard on my wallet, because I have discovered MANY books that I want to have.

A benefit of reading these books is that I afterwards feel a deeper connection to that state, that I kind of “own” it, because how many residents of a state have read a full-length history of their home? One in a thousand? Probably not even that many.

So even though North Dakota is one of the few states that I haven’t visited, because it is not on the way to anything and requires a separate trip, I now feel very possessive of North Dakota. Did you know that Lawrence Welk’s distinctive accent was North Dakota Russo-German? He didn’t learn English until he was an adult.

Today, I finished reading Race in the Crucible of War: African American Servicemen and the War in Vietnam by Gerald F. Goodwin (racial questions during Vietnam War) and started War By Other Means: The Pacifists of the Greatest Generation Who Revolutionized Resistance by Daniel Akst (pacifist movement in America before and during WW2)

Probably by now, anyone who reads my posts will have discerned that I have a soft spot for many books, obscurities and older classics, that probably not many people are drawn to nowadays (and that is putting it mildly). No matter, they have an enthusiast in me.

The historian James Bryce (1838-1922) first published his history of the Holy Roman Empire in 1864, and revised it several times over the coming decades. When I taught World History, of course I could not resist using Voltaire’s quip (“Neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire”); it is the sort of thing that students remember. But there is a lot more to the story, and although this Bryce treatment is demanding, it is not at all musty. Catch this tart comment:

“Men were wont in those days to interpret Scripture in a singular fashion. Not only did it not occur to them to ask what meaning words had to those to whom they were originally addressed; they were quite as careless whether the sense they discovered was one which the language used would naturally and rationally bear to any reader at any time. No analogy was too faint, no allegory too fanciful, to be drawn out of a simple text.”

Patrick wrote: "I am reading the States and the Nation series of bicentennial histories; ex-library copies can be had very inexpensively. (I get this uneasy feeling that libraries don’t hold onto anything anymore,..."

North Dakota has the Badlands which are an amazing sight.. I drove across the state west to east and it seems endless. Teddy Roosevelt is associated with ND because of hix time there when young. It may not be my favorite of the 50 states that I have visited, but is well-worth going to.

South Dakota also feels like it takes a LONG time to get across, partly because it is largely flat and unvaried, but then you get to Montana, and talk about endless! Great night skies in those parts, though: I had never seen the stars like that.

There is something very atmospheric about a little town or a single lonely farmhouse in the middle of the vast prairie. Many novels have taken advantage of this.

Just started:

Lucas Jordan

'The Chipilly Six: Unsung heroes of the Great War'

Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Atkinson’s first book, The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point's Class of 1966. A look at the U.S. Military Academy’s class of 1966 from their plebe year, to Vietnam, and the post-war years.

More than halfway through The Journal of Patrick Seamus Flaherty. (Vietnam War) Very easy and insightful read! Will probably finish today.

I am currently reading, and nearly finished 'Singapore Burning' by Colin Smith which I came to from another reader here. The book is brilliant - I think the battle of Malaya and Singapore in 1942 is an event which explains so much about not simply the British empire, but all European colonial 19th century empires. I will have much to say in my review but one tiny story from this amazing book concerns a Singapore resident (a white British one) returned home to find their 'Boy' (a servant in the household) had been injured an air raid and was in hospital injured. It took them a huge amount of time to find him because they did not know their 'Boy's' name. None of the white Singaporeans knew the real name of their 'Boys', they were just 'Boy'. That almost invariably the 'Boy' would be middle aged or even elderly (almost never a boy) only makes it more grotesque. That little vignette says more then anything else to sum up, not simply relationships between whites and non-whites (and the parallels with the way the term 'Boy' was used in the USA for black adult men) but how vast the separation from and lack of knowledge of the ruled that the rulers had

I am currently reading Brian Catchpoles book on the Korean War. Really great read so far, I hope to finish it today.

The Korean War: 1950-53

Sergeant York: Last of the Long Hunters

Great book with a lot of backstory. A very easy read that could be finished in a couple of days.

Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age by Peter Paret (the second incarnation)

900 dense pages, but split into 29 essays, so diverse & rewarding.

Sounds like a pretty interesting book Dimitri!

I am currently reading a book about Moses Robinson who was instrumental in the founding of the state of Vermont. It goes into great detail about the politics, insurgency, and rebellion that led to the state becoming a republic, and ultimately the first state of the United States after the original 13 colonies.

I am currently reading a WW2 mystery novel

When the Sea Came Alive

I've just finished Therese Raquin (Emile Zola), and about to start The Darling Buds of May, which will be light and gentle – than back to heavier stuff.