It might seem odd to find at this website a book review focused on a publication exploring the Native American defeat of U.S. Army Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment on June 25, 1876 at the Battle of The Little Big Horn. Yet, over the years I have developed a strong interest in both the Battle of The Little Big Horn and the equally compelling 1879 Battle at Isandlwana. As such, anytime a book about those topics comes along that I feel is more than worth my dear reader's valuable time I want people to know about it. This is exactly that kind of book.
The Casemate Illustrated Series is rapidly proving to be one of the better book series currently available. Gary Yee's look at World War II sniping is no exception to that observation, and is well worth your time. I particularly enjoyed how much this book delved into into the details of sniper weaponry, tactics, techniques and procedures, and training.
This is not only a well-researched book (referencing a combination of memoirs, primary sources that include military training publications from the era, and interviews), but is informative but engaging.
German Logistics is the latest entry in Casemate's Illustrated Special series. Most readers of my work know that I tend to recommend meaty operational histories. However, I also believe a book weighted toward illustrations, tables, and charts can also be entertaining and useful for aiding reader comprehension regarding a particular historial aspect - as long as it also contains insightful and well researched content. German Logistics checks all of those boxes.
Most importantly, authors Forty and Charlton-Taylor's work also is part of a wave of newer research showing that Germany’s losing
South Pacific Air War Volume 3 is one of a series of books providing perhaps the best coverage of such topics I have seen to date. Though this review covers the third volume of a larger series, do note that these books can be read alone. The focus of this volume is on the May 1942 Operation MO launched by the Japanese with its goals featuring taking Tulagi and Port Moresby. Notably, the combat covered in this book includes that of the first carrier-on-carrier battle in history (duirng the Battle of the Coral Sea).
The historiography of the July 1943 Battle for Kursk and the name Valeriy Zamulin are fast becoming synonymous. I have repeatedlyreviewed his numerous publications on this topic, and done so for good reason. His research is thorough and his conclusions always add to our understanding as to why and how the Red Army defeated this final truly large scale German offensive (codenamed Operation Citadel) in the war it fought against the Soviet Union.
The Planning and Preparations for the Battle of Kursk: Volume 1 is no different in offering much to chew on for anyone interested in this battle. In
Readers of this website may recognize the name Gullachsen. I previously recommended his two-volume set on the I. SS PanzerKorps Defense of the Verrieres and Bourguebus ridges during the Normandy Campaign that kicked off with the Allied D-Day invasion of 6 June, 1944. The Defeat and Attrition Of The 12. SS-PanzerDivision HitlerJugend is meant to be the first of two new books further exploring the armor-heavy battles on the eastern end of the Allied lodgement in Normany. The focus here is specifically on the 12. SS-PanzerDivision.
Operation Bagration, An Incomplete Truth offers an in-depth and fresh take regarding how the Red Army finally defeated Germany's Army Group Center after almost a year of failed prior attempts. Boris Sokolov (through this English language translation by Richard W. Harrison) performs a valuable service with this publication, and does so for several reasons.
Since the Second World War ended a plethora of former German officers have published countless works that, taken together, have helped shape the discourse around any number of critically important events which occured during the Nazi-Soviet
This review covers volumes 1 and 2 of the Solomons Air War series by Michael Claringbould and Peter Ingman. Combined, both volumes offer a superbly detailed and richly illustrated look at the pivotal campaign in the air that defined the turning of the tide in the epic 1941-1945 war in the Pacific. This review will take each volume in turn.
Volume 1 of Solomons Air War focuses upon the aerial warfare in the August-September 1942 period of the war in the Solomons Islands theater, as well as what happened earlier that spring and summer which led up to the campaign.
Few clashes of armor occuring in history have built up a mythology such as that surrounding what happened at Villers-Bocage following the June 1944 Allied invasion of France (Operation Overlord). If one were looking to understand this battle, what really happened, and how it all unfolded in the most accurate detail the general reader has access to today - then this is the book for you.
The July 1942 to February 1943 events in and around Stalingrad may have decided the outcome of the Second World War. Accounts from the perspective of German combatants are many and varied (as shown by my April book review). Not so much so from the Soviet side. If this book were merely after-the-battle memoirs it would be valuable. However, the nature of the accounts discovered by author Jochen Hellbeck are extroardinary, and this book is more than worth your time if you have any interest in at all in perhaps one of the most dramatic and important battles to have occured in recent history.
